


Trashmagician & Necromancer

by IncurableNecromantic, ultimaromanorum



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultimaromanorum/pseuds/ultimaromanorum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Trashmagician and the Necromancer are two women sharing a house, a semi-magical lifestyle, and occasionally the keys to their private liquor cabinets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bring Me to Life

The Necromancer peered at the unfolding situation.

“I think we’ve got it pretty much in hand,” the Trashmagician said with a smile.

The Necromancer pointed at the seething crowd of bodies. “Six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen…” She stopped. “Does something look wrong to you?”

“Uh. Hordes of the undead wrong, or…”

“Wrong-wrong, ass.”

The Trashmagician took a look. Dirty, shattered hands caked in potter’s clay and icy mud battered at the doors of the museum, their fingernails shredded in the effort to escape from coffin-wood and sediment and reach for light. Arms had been shucked of their putrescent flesh and muscle in the effort to pull their bodies up from the charnel abyss. They came in droves, slow and aching, shambling in on broken feet and tattered stumps, belching pestilent goo and oozing the last of their mortal juices down their legs, leaving shining trails of filth behind them.

“Nah,” the Trashmagician said.

“Because I only raised nine of them,” the Necromancer said tightly. “So where did the others come from?”

Oops.

“Oh,” said the Trashmagician, shaking out her hands. “Uh. Shit.”

“You raised them,” the Necromancer said.

“Maybe a little?”

“What the hell, dude?” the Necromancer squawked. “Next thing I know you’re going to be wearing my shoes!”

“What? No. I don’t wear heels.” Not without maternal interference, anyway.

“You’re biting my style! You’re biting my whole aesthetic!” the Necromancer cried, throwing up her hands. “God damn it! I knew this would happen. The moment you put down ‘occult powers, miscellaneous’ on your application form, I knew we’d have overlap. How are we going to sort this out?”

“What do you mean, how are we going to sort this out? They’re all zombies—”

“They are not zombies, mine are revenants—”

“And all we have to do is throw a brain in a mass grave and cover them all up after they leap in.”

“They don’t eat brains for sustenance, you goob. They’re not going to crave brains.”

“What do they crave?”

“They don’t crave anything!”

“Well, then, why do they eat people?”

“Because zombies are shits!” the Necromancer shrieked. “Which is why I don’t work with them!”

“Well, whatever! We’ll get them in a pit and, I don’t know, maybe run a slab of cement over it.”

“No! They have intelligence enough to claw for life, obviously. What if they get into the sewers? That’s how you get C.H.U.D.s!”

“I don’t know about all your C.H.U.D. stuff, man.”

“They’re like the ants of the undead world!”

“Whatever. I just work here, man, I gets what I gets.”

The Necromancer ran her hands through her hair. “What were you even trying to do?”

“Anything. You know, the usual thing. Try and lasso our perps with an illusory rope. Open a portal to the spirit world. Set something on fire. Um. Make shit levitate in a particularly spooky way.”

“This is cartoonish.”

“Yeah, duh, because I’m an occult grab-bag with, like, weird potluck rules. You can’t get Yorkshire pudding every time. Eventually somebody’s got to draw the tuna gelatin.”

“I thought you had just assembled little scraps of occult knowledge and mixed it all up into a functional understanding of magic.”

“That, too.”

“Like that one episode of Hoarders, with the cult leader with a room full of Baphomet stuff.”

“No…”

“Like Oscar the Grouch, with a grimoire.”

“No!”

“Like if you took Fox Mulder and ran a few thousand volts of electricity through him and he somehow gained the ability to, I don’t know, summon some of his own shitty ideas into existence.”

“…isn’t that literally how I described it, once? No electricity, though.”

“In any event,” the Necromancer said, looking with deep annoyance at the shambling horde, “you’re going to have to rein them in. I’ll have to split my guys off of yours.”

“Why? They’re all the same.”

“They are not all the same! You just spat some of your useless, dumbshit middle school Latin—”

“My dumbshit middle school Latin is not useless!”

“—and up they came, like shitty little snowdrops bursting through an uniquely stupid Spring thaw,” the Necromancer pushed on. “I’m going to reuse my guys. They’ve got juice left in ‘em.”

“Are you one of those people who washes and reuses plastic sandwich bags?”

“No, but I do wash and reuse, oh, say, Benjamin Franklin!” the Necromancer snapped.

“You never brought him,” the Trashmagician said, aghast. “What was he going to do?”

“No, I didn’t bring him. Obviously. But you get the idea. You don’t just throw people out.”

The Trashmagician eyeballed the newly-risen zombies. “Well, what do you want to do?”

“What have you got?”

“Anything from ghostly disembodied kitten taps to an occult nuclear bomb—”

“Redundant.”

“—so spin the wheel and win a prize.”

“No. That seems like a really fast way to destroy everything.”

“Hey. It works for me.”

“I can’t get at your guys without risking the unlife of every dead thing here,” the Necromancer said. “What did your powers even think they were doing? We’re trying to stop a museum heist, which…”

The Trashmagician spared a glance at the glass museum doors. Stuck on the stairs, undead creatures of every shape and size loomed and growled through the doors at the terrified thieves, who cowered in the foyer, staring in horror at the ghastly horde waiting outside to greet them. That was a solid fucking perimeter, for a group that only had about two good limbs for as many bodies.

“Well, I don’t know. Can’t we declare shirts versus skins?” the Trashmagician asked, shrugging her shoulders.

The Necromancer looked around, hands on her hips. “Uh, yeah. Give it a shot. See what your powers do.”

“What, necromancing doesn’t include ordering the dead around?”

“The rules of parenting don’t apply here,” the Necromancer grumbled. “They won’t obey me. Since I didn’t make them, I can’t claim to be able to kill them and make another just like them.”

“So they’ll obey me?”

“If they obey anyone.”

“Well, what’s plan B?”

“We’ll have to fuck them all up. Real fire-and-brimstone stuff. Take a leaf out of, um…”

“Zombacalypse?”

“No.”

“World War Z.”

“No.”

“Evil Dead II. I want to go on record saying I am interested but not committed to the possibilities offered by chainsaw limbs.”

“No, shut up. Um. The Book of Revenant-lations?”

The Trashmagician gave her a look.

“Fuck it, just see if you can get them to signify who belongs to whom,” the Necromancer huffed.

“Anything for you, Bore of Babylon,” the Trashmagician replied.

She cracked her knuckles and raised her hands above her head. Shirts versus skins. Shirts versus skins.

Yeah, she could think of a thing or two that would answer.

“Pugnare concubinis,” she intoned, feeling the magic coursing through her. Come on, occult powers. Make it happen.

Over by the museum entrance, a change was moving through the undead. Some of them stopped terrorizing the thieves and, with a ripple like a vibrating tuning fork, began peeling off their own skin.

Soon, a quintet of very gory skeletons stood opposed to the Necromancer’s revenants, smacking at them with bony hands.

“Are,” the Necromancer said. “You. Shitting me.”

“Nah.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” the Necromancer said, her voice rising to an offended squeak, “that you consider me to be on the wrong side of the skeleton war?”

“What?” Slaps were forthcoming. The Trashmagician jigged and dodged as light, furious little smacks chased back her chin and cheeks. “No—stop—quit it—it’s shirts versus skins—on a metaphysical level!”

“You’re calling my revenants fuckboys!”

“Quit it!” The Necromancer wore rings.

“Pugnare this, you—”

The Trashmagician seized both of the Necromancer’s wrists and squeezed. A satisfying little grind of bone shifted beneath her palms and the Necromancer gasped. “Ya finished?”

“NO,” the Necromancer said. “Make them stop attacking my revenants!”

“Maybe if your revenants weren’t giant pussies…”

“Make. Them. Stop.”

“Consto,” the Trashmagician cried, and the skeletons paused in the attitude of smacking. “There! Happy?”

“More so,” the Necromancer allowed. She heaved a breath. “Shit. What are we going to do with them?”

“I only have one idea, and I thought you didn’t want C.H.U.D.s.”

“Do you not have any ideas at all for zombie disposal?”

“It’s not like I can just throw them in a dumpster!”

The Necromancer paused, her spine straightening. “Actually…”

* * *

The next day, janitors at the museum were amazed to find that five perfectly good semi-cleaned skeletons, preserved in shellac, in the back alley where they kept the dumpsters.

The skeletons were promptly removed to their rightful place in Bodies: the Exhibition.


	2. Mr. Bubble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Accidental Summoning

“So what are you trying to tell me?  Because I get the sense that you’re gently trying to break something to me here.”  The Trashmagician didn’t turn away from her desk, but she could hear the Necromancer shuffling her feet awkwardly.  She was standing just in front of the door, where the icon of St Jude above the desk would be piercing her to the soul with its faintly supercilious gaze.

The Necromancer was silent.

“Is it bad?”

“A little.”

“Does it involve unfathomable beings from beyond the stars?”

The necromancer shuffled her feet again.  “How did you know?”

“Call it a hunch.”  The Trashmagician put down the the Nabatean potshard she had been examining and turned to lean on the desk, hands in her pockets.  “You wear Lovecraft Protagonist Glasses™.  It was bound to happen sooner or later.  So, who’ve we got, and where is he?”

The Necromancer gulped.  “He’s— a lab assistant.  Of sorts.”

The Trashmagician narrowed her eyes.  “Is he by any chance a small retrosnub icosicosidodecahedron?”

“I don’t know what any of those words mean.”

The Trashmagician held up a soft-ball-sized spiky 3-d printed plastic _thing_ that had been sitting atop the blackened antique desk.  She tossed it at the Necromancer, who caught it neatly and whimpered as the spikes dug into her hand.  “For some reason geometers don’t really like saying small retrosnub icosicosidodecahedron all the time, so they call it Yog-Sothoth.  I don’t trust geometers: they know more than they’re letting on.”

The Necromancer gingerly set the model down on the mantlepiece between a gold-footed turtle shell bowl and a little stele of al-‘Uzzah.  “Ok, you got me.  He’s locked in the downstairs bathroom.”

“HOW?” howled The Trashmagician.  “I’ve buried, like, six whole knives in front of the door.  How the hell did he get in?  Did you summon him?”

“Maybe a little?”

“Wait, I thought brotherman is coterminous.” The Trashmagician was pinching the bridge of her nose.  “So he’s outside the universe.  And he can’t get us.”

“I think we can be reasonably confident that if we open the bathroom door we’ll find ‘brotherman’ lurking on the threshhold.  Coterminously, of course, but still lurking in a discernable, finite manner.”

The Trashmagician sank down into a threadbare wingback chair, crushing a pile of parchments in the process.  “So why exactly are you in my apartment shuffling your feet— HANG ON.”

“The Necromancer jumped.  “What?”

“Why are you in a bathrobe?  Why is your hair wet?  There’s something you aren’t telling me.”

“My bubble bath is Yog-Sothoth.  Incidentally, you should put that, uh, the geometrical object in a hamsterball or something.”

“No.  You stop right there.  You are not deflecting this.  I seent you.  How did you convince Yog-Sothoth to possess your bubblebath?  I need to know.”

“I think it was the Scriabin. And I was absently doodling on myself with the shower gel.  Yeah, that was probably it, I must have drawn a node.  And the scented candle probably helped a bit.  For some reason lavender aromatherapy is really appealing to him, I don’t know.”  The Necromancer ruffled her hair.  “Uhh, sorry?”

“Yeah.  Relaxing.  Okay, so back up.”  The Trashmagician pointed at the small retrosnub icosicosidodecahedron.  “What was that about a hamsterball?”

“Hounds of Tindalos, dude.  Hella sharp corners on that, you should put it in something round.”

“All right, all right, I’ll put it on the grocery list, but that isn’t germaine.  What IS germaine is that there’s an Elder God in your apartment and you seem to be expecting something from me.  Please tell me you’re not thinking of flushing him down the drain.”

“No, that would be disastrous.”  The Necromancer considered.  “Uh, yeah.  I can't make Scriabin noises with my voice, so I want to borrow the Aquanet.  Every aerosol can you have, in fact.  And a lighter.  Ugh, he’s gonna be so pissed.”


	3. Can't Catch Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Homunculi

The Black Man in the Woods had come by with his little book and the rictus grin of an Elder God in the agonizing throes of attempted charm, and the Necromancer had been obliged to send him away with a flea in his ear.

She was bound to Yog-Sothoth, what little glamor there was to be had in that, but all the same she didn’t see much benefit in jumping ship to go ally herself with a witch-collector who didn’t even bother to give one eternal youth. Poor old Keziah Mason was looking rough these days. She should really send Kezzy some of that poultice of Shub Niggurath and patchouli that Simon Orne liked so much.

Nyarlathotep had been loath to go. It was always the way with him. He had such a fondness for witches, and although the Necromancer didn’t particularly consider herself to be anything of the sort, something about the magic-weaving female appealed to him. Or perhaps it was just that he wanted to get one over on Yog-Sothoth by filching away a little human, as if that could matter to the Keeper of the Gate.

There had to be some way to get Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep to keep their little pissing contests to themselves. It was becoming ridiculous.

She’d just closed the door on old Bloody Tongue and picked up her phone to text the all-clear to the Trashmagician, when a very tiny little man clambered up onto her kitchen table and stood there with his hands on his hips.

The Necromancer stared.

The little man looked around and spotted her. He went very still for a moment or two, and then started shrieking.

“Giant!” the tiny man screamed. “Cheese it, fellas!”

The Necromancer’s floor moved around her, little bodies racing away from her and towards the back rooms.

Lurching into action, the Necromancer tore to the kitchen sink and dug around beneath, pulling out an aerosol can of Raid and seizing a kitchen towel. She stepped into her hard-soled shoes and ran after them, hoping she’d remembered to lock the door to the summoning room.

* * *

The Trashmagician tapped on the Necromancer’s door. There had been a lot of loose talk earlier in the week about having dinner and she meant to get to Twa Corbies before they ran out of that red wine she liked.

“NO,” came the answering bellow from behind the door.

The Trashmagician tested the handle. The door was unlocked.

That was as good an invitation as any.

She opened the door with a careful creak and popped an eye around the door.

“CLOSE IT,” the Necromancer screamed. The Trashmagician hurried inside and slammed the door behind her.

“With you–with you on the outside, damn it!” the Necromancer added, too late. She had a can of insecticide in one hand and a hand towel in the other.

“What’s with the spray can?”

“Lilliputians,” the Necromancer growled.

Ah. Enlightening.

Something crashed further away in the apartment and the Necromancer sprang into the hall like an angry two-legged gazelle.

“You motherfuckers are going to loose all my ghosts!” she screamed.

The Trashmagician looked around the room. What appeared to be the entire contents of the Necromancer’s glassware collection stood overturned on the ground. She peered at the daring new interior design choice for a moment before noticing that something moved beneath the glass walls of the tumblers and wine-glasses.

Lots of little things.

Under what had to be thirty–maybe forty–cups and mugs.

The Trashmagician blew out a slow breath through pursed lips and resisted the urge to clear her throat.

So! That’s where all her gingerbread men had gone. Maybe she really shouldn’t try to bake.

Her involvement could be probably kept a secret.

She carefully danced through the living room and into the hall. “Uh, not to seem critical, but didn’t Joe Curwen have a dozen reject bins in a very similar set up in his basement?”

“His abominations were held in pits underground,” the Necromancer shouted, over the sound of fizzing poison. “First, these aren’t my abominations, and second, I’m keeping them inverted. Different thing. Aaron Burr, if you don’t get back in a jar this goddamned instant–well then, buddy up with Chester A. Arthur and do it right quick or by thunder I’ll have you twisted into such a shape…!”

There was the noise like a reversing yawn and the buzz of aerated poison abated. The Trashmagician stuck her head in to the storage room to find the Necromancer standing on an overturned Pyrex bowl full of writhing little bodies.

“Here,” she said, “stand on this.”

“Um, don’t mind if I don’t,” the Trashmagician said, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “What do you mean, not your abominations? Where did they come from?”

“Shat if I know. They just appeared like hundreds of tiny little humanoid cockroaches. It’s an invasion. I’m under attack.”

“Hence the air-Raid.”

“Yes.” The Necromancer looked around and fetched a very heavy-looking metal cylinder off of one of the shelves. She carefully maneuvered it on top of the Pyrex bowl, to serve as a weight. “As always, I have taken quick measures to counteract this Axis of Weevils.”

The Trashmagician grinned. “And here you are, fighting them in high heels. I’m impressed! Giving them a little taste of the old glitz-krieg, huh?”

The Necromancer picked up her can of Raid and her hand towel once more. “Come on. I think they might be in the bathroom, and if they get into the bubble bath…”

“No.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“You mean he’s still down here?!“

“Parts of him. Possibly. I think he’s interested in the Internet. He wants to start a blog.”

“Of course Yog-Sothoth wants a blog,” the Trashmagician said, crossing herself furiously. She knew she should’ve brought an amulet down. A talisman. Something.

“Don’t be a baby,” the Necromancer whispered, leading the way into the salle de bain.

“I didn’t want this. All I wanted was to go out to dinner.”

“Life’s funny that way, isn’t it?” the Necromancer cleared her corner into the bathroom and stood very still, watching and waiting.

A tiny little hiccup came from the bathtub. In a flurry of motion she tossed her hand towel into the tub and snatched up a little wriggling humanoid form.

The Necromancer squeezed. “Talk, you insect,” she demanded. “How many of you are there?”

“I’ll never break!” the tiny man screeched. “You’ll never make me talk!”

“Oh, won’t I?” the Necromancer hissed. “Do you have any idea what I can do to a little worm like you? Do you know who I am?”

“Hey, yo, give him here,” the Trashmagician said.

“Excuse me?” the Necromancer asked.

“I know how to deal with him. You just gotta give him a little incentive.”

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists!”

“Come on, you’ve got, oh, three, maybe four dozen other little dudes out there that you can menace if my idea doesn’t work,” the Trashmagician insisted. “I got this, man.”

The Necromancer glowered at the tiny homunculus before handing him over to the Trashmagician.

The little man glowered up at the Trashmagician and piped, “You’ll never make me talk!”

“Who is your leader?” the Trashmagician asked calmly.

“Fie!”

The Trashmagician nodded slowly. She held the homunculus by the waist and very carefully and deliberately snapped his left leg off.

The homunculus screamed. The Necromancer’s eyes went wide behind her glasses. Her mouth popped open as the Trashmagician put the homunculus leg in her mouth and chewed it to pieces.

Yum. Gingerbread.

“Holy shit,” the Necromancer said, covering her mouth with her hand and looking just a little green.

“Who?” the Trashmagician asked the homunculus.

“We d-d-d-don’t have one! We’re a–we’re an autonomous self-regulating commune of the proletariat!” the homunculus cried.

“You’re commies?” the Trashmagician snorted. Oh, she was never, ever using that recipe again. “Well, who’s in charge of your commune?”

“We take turns! But I’ll never tell you who our leader is! I’ll never–AUGH!”

The Trashmagician licked her lips and took hold of his leg. The homunculus kicked and kicked.

“All right! All right! It’s Kyle!” the homunculus screamed. “It’s Kyle’s turn to serve as executive officer! We have a battalion of forty men and we’ve come down to establish new territory!”

“In my living room?” the Necromancer demanded.

“Yes! With easy access to the Gates of No Man’s Land and the Outside World, it was the ideal location!” The homunculus wriggled in terror. “We didn’t know we were walking into our own tomb!”

“Told you you oughta warn people about that,” the Trashmagician said. “I think a tasteful little plaque that says ‘Necromancer’ would do nicely.”

“Can you excuse us for a minute,” the Necromancer said to the homunculus. She grabbed him and overturned the toothbrush cup on top of him. “Well, what do you want to do with them?”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re tiny little humans, technically. This might be considered murder.”

“No way, man. If they enter your house without your permission, you have the right to use lethal force to defend yourself.”

“Well, we’ve got to do something with them. And short of chopping off all their little heads with a pair of scissors, I don’t really think there’s any way to dispose of them. Obviously they don’t bleed much, as we know from your little cannibal routine.”

“Did you know I used to dance under the name Polly Famous?”

“In any event, my optic friend, we’ve got to sort out what we’ll do with them.”

“I say kill ‘em. I’ll have no truck with commies.”

“Any suggestions?”

“I mean, they’re trapped under all your cups and bowls like roaches. How long does it take a roach to suffocate?”

The Necromancer pulled out her phone and looked it up. “One week. Maybe.”

Damn! They were never going to get out to dinner at this rate.

“Killing them might be too difficult,” the Necromancer mused. “They could revolt back and we could be subjected to Swift justice.”

“S’pose.”

“…does our neighbor still have that blue tarp?”

* * *

The Homunculus Republic of New Hamilton Beach was established in the backyard, using the neighbor’s tarp as a communal tent.

“We have named it after our ancestral homeland,” Kyle informed them. “Legend has it that we were forged in the fires of the celestial oven. Our elders saw inscribed upon the top the immortal words, ‘Hamilton Beach’!”

The Trashmagician stayed very, very quiet and later went upstairs to put a General Electric sticker over the brand name of her oven.

In very short order the neighborhood cats took care of the entire camp. One morning the homunculi were establishing a growing perimeter, and the next there were lots of fat, ginger-smelling strays milling about in the backyard, looking rather like they would produce switchblades at any given moment.

The Trashmagician burned her cookbooks in the least magically symbolic manner possible and that was generally considered to be the end of that.


	4. But Shit, It was 99¢

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Demonic Possession
> 
> A collaboration with cantstoptemplarswillgetme

“Calm down, and explain to me exactly what’s going on,” said the Necromancer slowly.

“I can’t calm down. I realize that for you this is Tuesday, but some of us don’t pencil demonic possession into our daily routines.”

“I don’t schedule them. Who schedules a Tuesday?”

“You know what I MEAN,” the Trashmagician said in a strangled little shriek.

“Whatever. So you chained yourself to the radiator?”

“Look, I panicked, okay?” The heavy, almost medieval iron manacles clanked as the Trashmagician shrugged. “It seemed like a necessary precaution. I’m still not convinced that it wasn’t a necessary precaution.”

“Why do you even have those?” wailed the Necromancer.

“They scare the Fair Folk.”

“Of course. Of course they do.” The Necromancer ran a hand through her hair and began to pace the narrow upstairs hallway. “Okay. Okay. We’ve got to think about this calmly and rationally. How did you come to be possessed in the first place? Do you know?”

The Trashmagician pointed into the kitchen. “The apron. He must have been in the apron. I picked it up when I went to the thrift store to replace the dishes the homunculi broke.”

The Necromancer reached round the doorjamb and grabbed a standard unisex canvas apron. The trim and ties were cheetah-print and the lettering on the front was black, with a big cheetah-patterned lipstick mark over the first letter of the first word.

“Cook the Kiss?”

“I couldn’t resist. It’s the kind of anti-humor that appeals to me on a molecular level. It was a fiendish trap—” the Trashmagician’s eyes suddenly flared red as she lunged at the Necromancer. “IT ISN’T FUNNY.”

The Necromancer took a small step back. “No, it is sort of horrible.”

The Trashmagician slumped back against the wall, gasping. “You shut up. Neither of you understand irony. Ugh, I wish he wouldn’t keep doing that. Okay, okay, I’m calming down. I need to you go up to attic and get me a book called Ars Evictionis. It should be in the hutch over my desk. You can’t miss it: it’s a big folio bound in green leather. 17th century. Oh, and grab the can of sidewalk chalk by the bed too.”

* * *

“I AM UNIMAGINABLY POWERFUL. OLDER THAN THE WORLD.”

“Shut up,” snapped the Trashmagician in her own voice. “I got you out of the dollar bin.”

“LOOK, WE ALL HAVE OUR STRUGGLES IN THE CURRENT ECONOMY.”

“How did you even get into that stupid apron in the first place?”

“TAX RETURNS. ANYWAY, INTERESTED IN ANY DIVINE POWERS, KID? WE GOT ‘EM AT A DISCOUNT.”

The Trashmagician burst out into a hollow, hysterical laugh. “No wait. I know this one. Simon Magus fell for this shit, but he was simple. I may be a sorcerer, but I’m not a dumbass. Eh, Simony?”

A thud came from the other room.

“THAT TRUE NAME THING WON’T WORK. I ALREADY OWN YOU,” howled Simony.

“No. I don’t think you do.” The Trashmagician tried to reach into her pocket but was thwarted by the chain. “Hey, Nec, after you find the book, look in my coat pockets, will you? There should be a receipt. Also, demon, I have to say I’m not in the slightest tempted to become a televangelist.”

“TEMPTING? I ONLY DO THAT WHEN MY SUPER’S KEEPING AN EYE ON ME. TEMPTATION IS A LOSING GAME.”

“Tell that to the Victoria’s Secret fragrance department.”

“SILENCE, MORTAL.”

“Would you please quit pulling against the shackles like that? We’re both in this body, you know.”

“ONLY IF YOU TREMBLE BEFORE ME.”

“Sod off. Ow.”

There was a second thud and the Necromancer stuck her head round the doorjamb. “Hey, did you hex the rope ladder or something?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You tell me. It’s thrown me out the hatch twice now.”

“Oh. Oh no.” The Trashmagician tried to get up.

“What. What did you do?”

“HEY. HEY I’M TALKING TO YOU.”

“Shut. Up.” The Trashmagician turned a deathly shade of grey as she struggled for control. “Oh god this is bad. This is really bad.”

“What’s bad?” howled the Necromancer.

“It’s the fuck off circle. I drew a fuck off circle round the hatch. If it’s throwing you back down, then you’re possessed too. We’re gonna have to get somebody else to go up there. Okay, in the meantime bring me the cross from over the door. And bring me a tissue, my nose is bleeding something awful.”

“YOU THINK A CROSS SCARES ME? I GO TO CHURCH EVERY WEEK.”

“I think you’re bluffing. If I can’t get rid of you, can I at least declare you as a dependent for tax purposes?”

“I DON’T THINK YOU CAN DO THAT.”

“Bet there isn’t a rule.”

The Necromancer trotted down the hallway and hurled a half-empty Kleenex pocket pack at the Trashmagician. “Now, when you say I’m ‘possessed.’ Do you mean I’m under contract or someone’s actually up in here?”

“No!” shrieked the Trashmagician as her eyes started to bulge again. “Vade retro, assbag! I’d sooner die than join the tent revival. You can’t make me. I’ve seen that X-Files episode. Okay, say again?”

“Do you mean I’m under contract or there’s someone in my body?” the Necromancer asked. “Because technically it’s both. I’ve had Azazel in my sinuses for like, days.”

The Trashmagician breathed out very slowly. “What.”

The Necromancer shrugged. “I had Azazel years ago. It’s kind of like mono, super boring and tiring, but the really irritating thing was that he would only eat churros and I gained like five pounds. Hear that, lardass,” she yelled, “if I gain so much as an ounce I’m going to fuck you up!”

The Necromancer winced and rubbed her nose, and a wheezy voice sneered, _“I’m into the gluten-free thing these days. And I only eat Stevia.”_

The Necromancer rolled her eyes. “About time, you whale.”

_“Hey.”_

“You weren’t getting any younger,” the Necromancer sniped. “Not that losing the weight is going to do you any good.”

“DAMN,” said Simony. He sounded just a little appalled.

“A demon with stretch-marks? Sooo tempting,” the Necromancer replied.

“Hey!”

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, MAN. TEMPTATION’S A–”

“Don’t try and be nice to Azazel!” the Trashmagician snapped. “And what the heck, N, fat jokes? You’re above that.”

“I can be a mean girl to the fucker illicitly using my sinuses as a condo if I want to,” the Necromancer replied, crossing her arms. “What do you want me to do about your books?”

The Trashmagician slumped further into the corner. “I don’t know. Just get them. However you can, but hurry up. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life selling contemporary Christian music.”

* * *

“Hey,” the Necromancer said in an overly bright tone to the next-door neighbor. “How are you?”

The next door neighbor gave the Necromancer a baleful look. “Fine. How are you?”

“Fabulous,” the Necromancer cooed. “Just wondering if you’re in the middle of anything?”

“I’m microwaving popcorn.”

Cooking food with harnessed waves wasn’t too technologically advanced for the Necromancer–the Stoeffer’s company heads had probably put at least some children through braces with her purchases over the years–but for someone who had been reared on food cooked over a hearth, microwaving popcorn still sounded like the cheater’s way out.

“Ooh, right. I don’t want to interrupt, but I thought maybe I could bother you for just a teensy little favor?”

The next-door neighbor looked like someone for whom any noun preceded by the word ‘teensy’ was not something they were particularly willing to do.

“Uh-huh?” the next-door neighbor asked, looking exhausted. The Necromancer abruptly remembered that the neighbor’s tarp had never been the same after the homunculi.

“Yeah,” the Necromancer said, a little desperately. “Can you just come along with me? I need someone to reach something off of a shelf.”

* * *

The neighbor came down the ladder with the big folio clamped under an arm. “This it?”

“Yes!” the Trashmagician grinned.

“Don’t bring it over,” the Necromancer warned the neighbor. “We don’t know who’s talking.”

The Trashmagician gave her a Look. “Well, how do we know who’s talking out of your mouth?”

“Please,” the Necromancer said, “you’re the one who freaked out and chained yourself up like a bike on a block with heavy foot-traffic. I just have the sniffles.”

The neighbor looked at them both very, very wearily. “So, what do I do?”

“Bring it to me,” the Necromancer said, “I’m a professional and also I’m not a delicate blossom of a creature.”

 _“Got that right,”_ Azazel sneered.

“I’m a succulent, fuck off,” the Necromancer said, taking the folio and licking a fingertip. The pages made a satisfying parchment-crackle sound as she flipped through it.

“‘As soon as a coin in the coffer rings,’” the Trashmagician said, “‘the soul from purgatory springs.’”

“Charming. Your own work?” the Necromancer asked.

“Johann Tetzel. But that must be how I got him, paying into the coffers of the Goodwill.”

“A tragic irony.”

“I’m just saying you probably have to pay to catch Simony.”

“Like hunting restricted game?” asked the neighbor.

“I WILL NOT BE MADE SPORT OF IN THIS WAY.”

“Haaa,” the Necromancer said. “Since she had the foresight to chain you up, I think you will.”

“Little focus, please,” the Trashmagician hissed.

“Mm. Well, maybe to throw him back into hell we have to do that little rhyme in reverse?” The Necromancer looked up from flipping pages. “What’s the opposite of money?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Haaa,” the neighbor said half-heartedly. “Hey, we could try setting her feet on fire.”

“Are you even reading the book?” squeaked the Trashmagician.

“I prefer an organic approach, uniquely tailored to the needs of the situation,” the Necromancer said. “Ah. But here we go. Exorcism.”

“This is gonna suck,” muttered the Trashmagician.

“IT’LL BE WORSE FOR ME.”

“Holy water–you’ve got all sorts, so we can get that from upstairs. Do you still have the strawberry flavor? I need to borrow some. That’s why I came up in the first place, I’m going to fill my neti pot and try and flush Azazel out.”

“Disgusting.”

“I don’t disagree, but it’s better than Weight Watchers. Two priests, one young and one old. We have something like that, yes,” the Necromancer mumbled.

“Four hundred years old certainly qualifies.”

“Fuck off.”

“I thought it was your twenty sixth birthday last month,” the Trashmagician said in accusatory tones. She was starting to float.

“It was,” the Necromancer said. “A chair. Duct tape. Something to keep the vomit from getting on the floor–ugh.”

“Nobody said this stuff was pretty,” the Trashmagician said. She was upside down, now, feet shifting uncertainly towards the ceiling. “A little speed on this would be appreciated or the blood’s going to rush to my head.”

“SUCKS TO SUCK.”

“Vomit?” the Necromancer echoed, wincing. “Okay. Let me just get something from my apartment.”

The Necromancer descended the steps and the neighbor looked at the Trashmagician’s inverted face.

“So,” the Trashmagician said. “What do you do?”

“Oh, I’m an art teacher,” said the neighbor.

“Nice. That’s nice. Um. Children, and paints, and stuff.”

“Yes. Adult students, too, kind of.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

The Necromancer returned with a small bag. She pulled out two old-fashioned Leyden jars full of water, with rods of a shiny red metal sticking out of the tops. She placed them at the Trashmagican’s left and right hands, about three feet away. She spent some minutes crouching on the floor in her heels before getting up and putting her hand about where the Trashmagician’s forehead had been some moments ago, when she’d been standing upright. She held up her thumb and squinted at it, shifting the jars this way and that before turning to the Trashmagician and holding out her arms.

“I need you to float down, if you can,” she said to the Trashmagician. “This goes a lot more smoothly if you’re on the floor.”

The Trashmagician frowned deeply and focused on an inner core of willpower. She hit the floor with a thud and thought she might have heard a crunch when her humerus hit the radiator. She pulled herself upright with a little whine.

The Necromancer helped her stand and lean against the radiator.

“All right– wait, I have an idea first. You there. Demon. How did you even get in in the first place? She hasn’t committed simony.”

“HAS TOO.”

“Has not.”

“NO, LISTEN. I CAN ENTER A BODY PREEMPTIVELY AND POSSESS IT COMPLETELY WHEN I’VE DETERMINED THE REGULAR INHABITANT HAS IN FACT COMMITTED SIMONY.”

“So?” The Necromancer’s already thin patience was wearing even further. “She hasn’t committed simony.”

“YOU KEEP SAYING THAT. OF COURSE SHE HAS. SHE WAS AT THE GOODWILL.”

“I don’t follow.”

“SHE WAS THERE TO DROP OFF DONATIONS, NO?”

“Yeah, so?”

“SO YOU GET A TAX REBATE, NO?’

“You can–”

“SEE. GOTCHA. RECEIVING PAYMENT FOR SPIRITUAL GOODS. CHARITY’S SUPPOSED TO BE A VIRTUE.”

The Trashmagician pushed past the demon and seized control of her own tongue. “Didn’t take the donation receipt. I never take the donation receipt. Too much paperwork.”

“AHHHH BUT YOU PAID FOR THE DISHES AND THE APRON.”

“Yeah,” interrupted the Necromancer. “But that turns out to have been paying for spiritual detriment.”

“SHE DIDN’T KNOW I WAS THERE.”

“Besides, how can you possibly construe an ordinary purchase transaction as spiritual. There ain’t nothing spiritual about buying the dish. Begone. You’re squatting on government property.”

“YOU CAN’T PROVE SHE DIDN’T TAKE THE DONATION RECEIPT.”

“Don’t be absurd. Hell loves paperwork. Iblis himself rules paperwork! If you haven’t got the paperwork, you ain’t got the proof. Now get the fuck out.”

“SURE. FINE. WHATEVER. RHETORICAL DISTINCTION ACKNOWLEDGED. BUT POSSESSION IS STILL NINE-TENTHS OF THE LAW.”

The Necromancer groaned. “Fine. It was worth a try. Ready?”

“What?” the Trashmagician said, staggering a bit as Simony withdrew. “What do you mean, ready? You haven’t set anything up. Nothing’s set up. There’s no circle, no holy water, no priests, no Max von Sydow–”

“I’M NOT GOING UNLESS I SEE MAX.”

“If you swivel your head, I’m out of here,” the neighbor said.

“Change of plans,” the Necromancer said. “This is the organic, hand-tailored approach.”

“WHAT?”

“Which means?”

The Necromancer grabbed the Trashmagician’s ponytail and yanked her head back with surprising strength as she whipped a knife out of the belt of her trousers. She sank it into the hollow of the Trashmagician’s throat, making a rude “pbbbbt” noise with her tongue as she leaned her weight on the hilt and the Trashmagician squawked and tried to thrash.

The Necromancer pushed her dying friend back against the radiator and window ledge beyond. She glanced behind her and smiled at the loud crack of the two Leyden jars. The red metal glowed bright for an instant before dimming once more and she dusted her hands against each other, shaking them out.

The neighbor stared at her with very wide eyes.

“Oh, come on,” the Necromancer said. “Vomit? No way. These are new shoes. Come on and get that bucket of chalk and we’ll put these two back where they belong.”

* * *

The Trashmagician lurched to life in the summoning circle. The chalk lines squiggled across the floor, around the radiator, up the wall and over the window. It was more of a blob than a circle, but it got the job done.

“You killed me!” she shrieked, rattling the chain on the radiator.

“I’m not seeing your point,” the Necromancer said, taking the uncharged Leyden jar out of the circle. “Possibly because I’m a necromancer, I grant.”

“You stabbed me in the heart!”

“And now we can just Swiffer the floor and put all this nastiness behind us.”

“You fucking killed me! And what the–what the fuck is this?” she screeched, gesturing at the IV drip stuck in her arm.

“Your blood,” the Necromancer replied. “I thought perhaps a little transfusion would get you feeling more like yourself.”

“MY blood?”

“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t give you blood you couldn’t receive.”

“When did you get this?”

“Let us not dwell on the past, but on the glorious future.”

“You stabbed me!”

“I cannot deny it; it is true. And it was an elegant solution! So,” said the Necromancer, “where’s the key?”

The Trashmagician looked panicky. “Key? Owww, holy shit.” She tried to rub at her throat.

“Stop moving your hands. You’re just making it worse.”

“I’m Italian. You might as well cut out my tongue.”

“The key?” the neighbor cut in sharply. “There’s got to be a key. We don’t have a bolt-cutter, so unless there’s a key you’re going nowhere.”

The Trashmagician stared down at her bloody wrists and glanced at the window.

“Oh you have GOT to be kidding me.” The Necromancer slowly drew a hand down her face. “You threw it into the garden?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Why?”

“So Simony wouldn’t know where it was. Obviously.”

“Was he viciously opposed to dandelions?” the Necromancer asked. “Did he have hay fever? Was he very particular about the quality of his skin in the sunshine?”

“First rule: the demon knows what you know. I didn’t want him pulling the old look-I’m-your-friend-let-me-out stunt. The neighborhood would even now be swarming with prosperity gospel preachers if I hadn’t had the foresight to throw away the key.”

“I still think this could all have been avoided if you just had a slightly better immune system,” the Necromancer said.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll get on that just as soon as they have a demon vaccine.”

“When you think about it, if they’re really legion is shouldn’t be too hard to get everybody inoculated. I mean, they’re already liquid, right?”

“What.”

“Demonic spirits.”

“This is really a fascinating line of thought but it’s doing precisely nothing to get me unchained from the radiator, so if you wouldn’t mind drawing yourself away from abstractions and the possibilities for medical breakthroughs, I’d be pretty obliged to you. And get the first aid kit while you’re at it.”

“I have a metal detector,” said the neighbor.

The Trashmagician smiled weakly and the Necromancer gaped a little bit. The better angels of their natures simultaneously wondered at this person’s continued willingness to lend them appliances, garden tools, and time. Generous beyond reason and reckoning.

They were probably going to have to buy the neighbor dinner.


	5. Body Beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Reanimation

“Hey. T.”

The Trashmagician waved a hand in the direction of the voice. "Shh. Masterpiece Mystery is on.“

"No. Focus. This is important.”

“Not more important than Alan Cumming.”

The voice went quiet. "…yeah, okay.“

Alan Cumming finished his introduction and the Trashmagician heard a sigh nearby.

"Okay,” the voice said. "But seriously. This is important.“

"How so?” the Trashmagician asked, glancing over in the voice’s direction. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” said the Necromancer’s voice. It sounded embarrassed.

As well it should. The Necromancer’s disembodied spirit was a ceaselessly rippling, amorphous thing, out of which screaming faces arose and melted, unseen hands clawing from within and without.

“Shit,” the Trashmagician said. "You look terrible.“

"I’m DEAD,” the Necromancer said. Things that might have supposed to have been arms wrapped around her ethereal body, as if there were bits she could cover. "Stop looking! It’s difficult to work out when I’m like this–and you wouldn’t look much better!“

"This does explain why you haven’t been answering my texts, though,” the Trashmagician admitted. "It’s been, like, two weeks, dude.“

"I’m intimately aware of that,” the Necromancer snapped.

“So what happened?”

“The Witch-Hunter,” the Necromancer grumbled. "I got jumped outside the Shop'n'Save. We really have to talk. I’m not a witch. He has no business hunting me.”

“’s poaching.”

“Exactly.”

“Well. Bummer. I mean, I guess. This kind of seems like your wheelhouse, though. I thought you and Death had an understanding.”

“We do. This isn’t Death’s fault. It was a perfect gentleman when we bumped into each other.”

“Oh-kay. So where’s your body?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here talking to you looking a hot mess, would I? Where do you think I’ve been for two weeks? It’s hidden,” the Necromancer snapped. Her spirit seemed to cross its arms.

They were kind of oozy, those arms. Boneless.

This is your soul on Yog-Sothoth, the Trashmagician thought. Not even once, she vowed.

The Trashmagician grinned. "So you’re saying you lost your girlish figure?“

The Necromancer cast about for an object to throw and her hand–or, what was probably supposed to have been her hand–passed harmlessly through a pillow.

"Poltergeists make it look so easy,” the Necromancer grumbled. "Now, come on. I need help finding my body. I’m still tethered, so I know they didn’t burn me.“

"Can’t you just…kind of pat around for it, if you still feel it?”

“It’s not a pair of eyeglasses–I can’t just flop around groping for it. I’ll be out for months, and you don’t want me to have to drag myself home after months underground.”

“Well, what do you feel?”

“I don’t–I feel nothing. And even if I did, you’d be amazed how much every grave feels like every other grave.”

“But why meee?” The Trashmagician whined. She had been looking forward to this show all week. In times of strain, only David Suchet could soothe her restless heart.

“Because you follow this shit,” the Necromancer said. "And happy is the tomb where no wizard lays. Something will be fucky around my grave, and you can operate a shovel.“

"I want a backhoe.”

“Maybe for Christmas. Come on. I’ll buy you a Coke.”

The Trashmagician sighed and went to go look at her newsfeeds.

* * *

There were three decent options.

For the past week dogs had been throwing themselves off a bridge in the Southeast, but the Necromancer insisted that she didn’t feel surrounded by water, so they eliminated that possibility without even making the visit.

The next was a small churchyard out near Brookland. There had been a vile miasma rolling through the cemetery for almost a week. It felt like a really viable option, all until the miasma proved to be swamp gas caught in a jet stream.

Running out of options, they visited the city dump, where two teenagers had recently gone missing, but aside from some suggestive evidence pertaining to a chainsaw murder, there was nothing of any interest.

The Necromancer was inconsolable.

“It takes at least five years to really understand how to even walk in a new body,” she raged. "And another ten after that, to really know how to put on eyeliner! And I’m going to have to make it all from scrap! I’ll never find another appendix like the one I had! It was perfect!“

"Sucks, man,” said the Trashmagician. For someone whose constant solution to any given problem was to effect a hard reboot in everyone around her, it was cosmically satisfying to watch the Necromancer flummox through her own death.

“Where could he possibly have put it?” the Necromancer grumbled. "Sure, this city isn’t huge, but–“

The Necromancer’s spirit stopped short. The Trashmagician glanced around, wondering if someone was wearing offensive shoes or something.

"It’s here,” the Necromancer said. "I know it.“

"Ooh,” the Trashmagician said. "Spooky.“

The Necromancer turned in a circle. "I knew I shouldn’t have turned off my nerves just before death…”

“I have the same problem with losing my phone when it’s on vibrate.”

“Wait, wait,” the Necromancer said. She extended a tentative little tendril and prodded the ground. "Here. It’s right here! How did he get my body under solid asphalt?! This hasn’t been repaired in years.”

The Trashmagician jerked a thumb at the entrance to the subway station. "I have an idea…“

The Necromancer rippled.

"Nooo,” her spirit moaned. "It’s so yucky down there! They never clean the grout!“

* * *

 

The Necromancer’s body had been stuffed into an alcove less than a quarter mile away from the station. The Trashmagician wedged in, shooed away the rats, and gingerly tugged away the white shroud that covered the corpse.

"Oh, whew,” the Trashmagician said. "I thought you’d have gone to dust by now.“

"That only happens if you are a shoddy craftsman,” the Necromancer sniffed.

“So what do we do now?” the Trashmagician said. "Do you just…throw it in the washing machine or something?“

"I mean, pretty much,” the Necromancer replied. "It’s been a few years since I was dead this long, though. How am I doing?“

The Necromancer’s body had gone a little gooey and rank in the humid air of the metro tunnel. Her eyes were missing, glasses propped on a nose that stood as a stark and withered premonitory above the twin valleys of her cheeks. Her hair had begun to fall out and her skin was definitely greenish. Her clothing was intact, albeit corpse-yucky and drenched in the two week old blood that had gushed from the horrific cut in her throat.

The Witch-Hunter had decorated her body with crucifixes. Her lips had been sewn together and after some prodding and whinging, the Trashmagician produced her knife and carefully cut through the stitches. She let out a whistle.

"Gnarly, man,” the Trashmagician said. "He cut your tongue out.“

"Don’t worry,” the Necromancer growled. "I’m going to get it back. Motherfucker! He took my emerald ring!“

"Rude!” After all, what was the good of killing a witch if you took all her stuff? So much for the moral high ground.

“Hawthorne gave me that!” the Necromancer wailed, miserable.

“I thought it was Cotton Mather,” the Trashmagician said.

“No. Cotton took me to a Christmas dance once, please try and keep up.”

“Pardon me so very much I’m sure. But at least he didn’t take your shoes.”

“Oh my God, are you serious? I would’ve gone and found him and shoved myself down his throat just like this.” The Necromancer blopped her ethereal tendrils across her corpse. "Hm. Could you possibly–“

"No, dude.”

“But–”

“I already touched your corpse once today. I’m not picking it up and carrying it away.”

“I would for you,” the Necromancer whined. "I have done!“

"Because you killed me,” the Trashmagician said. "At that point it’s the least you can do! And you know you definitely wouldn’t carry me if I was all stinky and weird, like you are now.“

"Fine,” the Necromancer groused. "Do you have any chalk?“

"Yes, definitely. Because I carry chalk with me all the time.”

“Don’t you?”

She did, actually. It was a shit magician who got surprised without chalk when a protective circle was needed.

She wedged a pieced in one of the Necromancer’s withered claws.

“Okay,” the Necromancer’s spirit said. "Here we go.“

The Necromancer shoved a tendril into her tongueless mouth and reclaimed her body in a motion that reminded the Trashmagician of nothing so much as what would happen if people vomited backwards. The hand with chalk flopped limp onto the floor and began laboriously tracing a wobbly circle across the floor and up the wall. The hand dragged the corpse, the body limp but for the articulating appendage. The corpse hissed and squelched, dead yet moving.

It took a long time. The Necromancer complained the entire time.

“Uuugh, it smells bad in here,” she whined. “I bet I have maggots in my sinuses. I always get maggots in my sinuses.”

“Das gross,” the Trashmagician winced.

“These tendons are all shot to hell. No fine motor control. Don’t try and make me knit.”

“Dang. And this seemed like the perfect moment.”

“I hate being dead. Huge fuckin’ waste of time.”

At last, the hand drew an invoking node and the Necromancer’s voice poured out of her unmoving throat, reciting the incantation of Yog-Sothoth.

The corpse swelled like a balloon, living fullness coming back to the Necromancer’s emaciated face, round white eyeballs growing like a time-lapse video of mushrooms in her eye sockets before they burst at the centers with pupils and bled iris color all around. The Necromancer’s hair sprang out and her exposed gums turned pink, a tongue growing out of her throat. The green flushed out of her skin like soap bubbles sliding off a wet wall and was replaced with a pallor that, if not particularly healthy-looking, was at least more typical of the Necromancer’s everyday appearance. Her neck knitted itself back together from right to left. Her mouth healed of its stitch wounds and her skin gave a visible full-body throb as all of her blood simultaneously responded to the activation of her heart.

The Necromancer blinked rapidly and looked around, wiggling her fingers and slowly unfolding her legs.

"You must have SUCH a charley-horse,” the Trashmagician said. She reached into her bag and passed the Necromancer the bottle of Snapple they’d bought at the convenience store. "Here. You should probably hydrate.“

The Necromancer reached up and unsteadily took the bottle. She managed to get it open and had a sip before she lurched to the side and retched.

The Trashmagician wasn’t usually very susceptible to sympathetic emesis, but watching the Necromancer vomit was almost enough to induce it. A thick stream of stubby, whitish larva roared out of her mouth, comingled with something that looked like nothing so much as black ooze and coffee grounds.

"Is that…Yog?” the Trashmagician said, averting her eyes.

The Necromancer spat out a few lingering maggots and took a big gulp of the Snapple.

“No. Just old blood,” she croaked. "Ewwww, these clothes haven’t been washed in weeks!“

"Neither have you.”

The Necromancer shrugged and drank the rest of the Snapple. "Ugh, and I’m going to break out so bad, since I haven’t been moisturizing.“

The Trashmagician wedged her hands in her pockets. "Sucks, dude.”

The Necromancer sighed. "Thanks for your help.“

"Oh, it’s nothing. Come on. We should probably hose you off before you go in the house.”

The Necromancer ran her fingers across her corpse patina-slick skin and shuddered. "Yeah. I don’t want to track this on the carpets.“

* * *

Three days later, the Necromancer was wearing her emerald ring again.

"Oh, you got it back,” the Trashmagician said approvingly.

“Yup,” the Necromancer said. She brushed her fingertip against a little open tin on the table beside her and turned a page in her book.

“I didn’t know you used that goo stuff to help turn pages. It it because of the desiccation or…?”

“Oh no,” the Necromancer said. "I just lick my fingers.“

The Trashmagician craned her neck and glanced into the little pot, knowing what she’d see. Yup. That was a disembodied human tongue.

"To each their own, but I gotta say: I would not want my tongue to be able to go about the place at liberty,” the Trashmagician said firmly. "You must taste everything."


	6. We Have Kramps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Santa Claus

Just after Halloween they got out on the porch and hung a Sam the Snowman doll in effigy. It got them both in the spirit. Sometimes somebody would go out and smash a Michael Bublé CD with a hammer, but that was all in good fun.

But ‘round about Thanksgiving, the mood in the house took a dark turn.

By mid-November the Necromancer submitted to her seasonal instinct to chain smoke. During late fall she could often be found on the roof, scowling at the heavens and diligently polluting a mostly-fresh set of lungs while the Trashmagician dug around in old books for new and appalling displays to erect in the backyard, so as to terrify what few neighborhood children dared peep. (Last year they’d been served an obscenity citation for some lovingly reproduced shitting logs. The Trashmagician had the notice framed.)

On the night of December 20th, the Necromancer labored on the roof, fixing the iron spikes across the chimney opening. She filed them to a searing point and clambered down onto the roof of the back porch.

“Naughtiness,” she said to the Trashmagician, “is an arbitrary distinction.”

“Really.”

“Think about it. It hinges upon the concept of transgression, but it never outlines what is transgressed and how. Niceness is necessarily equally ambiguous. There’s no delineation of boundaries.”

“Such as the boundaries between life and death, for instance?”

“I do not accept any moral system that can only be determined by a red-cheeked man who spends 364 days of the year in utter seclusion but for the company of ruminants. It’s like taking ethical advice from the Scots.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“And anyway Christmas exceeds its mandate.”

“Tell me about it.”

“There’s nothing unclear about Advent.”

“Yet Epiphany languishes.”

“I’m outraged.”

“Any right-thinking person should be.”

“We’re going to catch the wizard,” the Necromancer said. "It’s a public service.“

"That won’t solve anything. If you’re mad about the encroachment of Christmas beyond it’s rightful bounds, what you really want to do is catch Santa’s marketing team.”

“You just like using the coal he leaves me every year.”

“There’s three or four good barbecues in that horde. And for free!”

“Ain’t no free,” the Necromancer hissed. "You never have to sweep up.“

"I mean that year he did it when you still had your carpets down was definitely not on.”

“He owes me a new rug.”

“You ain’t wrong. I bet someone significant gave you those rugs.”

“Not really. But I did like them. Ladder, if you please.”

“How do you even get up there?” the Trashmagician asked, leaning the ladder over onto the back porch roof.

The Necromancer did not answer, choosing instead to clatter down the ladder and stand at the bottom, smoking like a high-heeled tire fire.

“This is an issue of home security,” the Necromancer said. "We’re Americans. He can’t do this to us.“

"It’s a severe violation of privacy,” the Trashmagician agreed. "How does he see you when you’re sleeping?“

"I try not to think about it.”

“No, this is serious,” the Trashmagician frowned. "How is he watching us? What has he tapped? I bet he’s a spook. Maybe a None-Such.“

The Necromancer wrinkled her nose.

They looked out over the backyard.

"No display this year?” the Necromancer asked.

“Bulk Baby Doll Discount Direct charges a lot for late notice.”

“Damn.”

“But I’ve got baby-shaped cookie cutters. We just need that red gel frosting stuff.”

“Oh, that’ll do. And we can use the leftovers for rings on King Herod’s fingers.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. You stay here and think about bear traps. I’ll go to the store.”

“Get booze.”

“Yeah, thanks for the reminder. What, are you new here?”

* * *

 

After a Christmas Eve supper of bacon-wrapped reindeer medallion steaks, they put out all the lights and queued up a selection of depressing Christmas classics on the stereo. The Necromancer sat up in the kitchen, guarding a plate of cookies and armed with a pack of Marlboros, a pot of coffee, and a pool cue. The Trashmagician divided her time between skulking around the house double-checking the traps, chewing on slices of fruitcake, and tossing the occasional log on the fire.

The chimney was a death trap, left as it had been to the Necromancer’s tender mercies, and the stair to the widow’s walk had been sealed off with an exciting menu of wards and guards. The hallways were fixed with pressure traps and nets, and every doorway had a bludgeoning object ready to spring. They’d been ducking for days to get in the habit.

The Trashmagician would scuttle into the kitchen for a cup of coffee every forty five minutes or so, and they’d exchange a few words, listening for the click of hooves on the roof.

“He could be getting in through the cellar door,” the Trashmagician observed.

“I locked it.”

“What’s that going to do against Santa?”

“I had that door weather-proofed. What’s he going to do? Ooze in around the bolt?”

“He can get down a chimney, can’t he?”

“That’s just squishing. You’re suggesting vaporization. What, he turns to fog and slips in through a crevice? Santa isn’t a vampire.”

“You say that with a remarkable amount of confidence for someone who hasn’t ever been able to catch this guy. You have to admit he only works nights.”

“If he’s a vampire, he’s only feeding on reindeers,” the Necromancer mused. "That’ll rot your brain. I don’t know many bright vampires but I’m pretty sure you eventually become what you eat. And I certainly don’t know many bright reindeers. Santa’s too damnably clever. That’s the whole issue, in fact.“

"You’re not looking at this scientifically.”

“Go away.”

The Trashmagician went away, but not because she was told to.

The clock was chiming about three a.m. when there was an enormous crash in the foyer. The Trashmagician bolted to meet the noise and found the entryway flooded with light.

A horribly malformed thing dangled from the chandelier, strung up from its ankles. It was still swinging, shaggy fur swaying and long horns scraping against the hardwood.

The Necromancer skidded into the kitchen doorway, took one look at the creature, and started to screech, swinging the pool cue like an avenging Valkyrie.

“Why! Is it always! My floors?!” she shrieked, inflicting some serious body blows on the monster. It yelped with the first snap and started wiggling, trying to dodge and guarding its body with its clawed, gnarled hands.

It was shouting back at the Necromancer. It had a German accent.

“Hey! Lady! It’s just my jo–OW! Stop!”

“My rugs!” the Necromancer roared. "You shitheel! My hardwood! You motherfucker!“

The Trashmagician let her get out a few more swings, thinking it probably therapeutic, before intervening. "Nec. Nec!”

The Necromancer was still swinging. The Trashmagician grabbed her wrists and held tight.

“Whoa, Tex, whoa!”

The Necromancer dropped the pool cue and aimed a savage kick at the thing’s head. She missed, hitting him in the shoulder instead.

“OW!” the thing shouted.

“How’s that for naughty, you son of a bitch?” the Necromancer spat. "Come into my house and leave charcoal all over the damn floor–“

"I don’t make the rules, lady, you’re just on the shit list!”

“On what grounds?” the Trashmagician asked. "'Naughty’ doesn’t mean anything.“

"She’s a mean person!” the dangling thing said. "And the fact that I’m hanging from the chandelier and developing welts is all the proof you need!“

"You invaded my home!” the Necromancer replied.

“It’s Christmas! I’m supposed to!”

“I don’t even know who you are, you fuzzy abomination. Where’s the wizard?”

“Like he’d come here,” the thing replied. "You’ve been naughty, so you get me.“

"Oh,” the Trashmagician said. "Duh. Yeah. Sorry, the accent should’ve been a dead giveaway.“

"Yeah. Anyway, I can’t really take anything over the age of 18 away in my sack, so I can’t kidnap you and take you to hell or anything,” the Krampus said to the Necromancer. "So it’s coal or it’s nothing.“

"I prefer nothing,” the Necromancer growled. "I’m not naughty!“

"You’re mean!”

“That’s just a character trait! You can’t use that to justify scattering coal across my floor. That’s definitionally naughty!”

“We don’t scatter coal!”

“Liar!”

“Yeah. At least put coal in a bag on the back porch,” the Trashmagician said. "It’s good coal. We don’t have a problem with the coal, of itself. But that rug thing was not on.“

"Wait,” the Krampus said. "A rug? There was a rug?“

"Yes!”

“When?”

“1967,” the Necromancer grumbled.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Krampus said sincerely. "Yeah, no, that was an elf year. I’m sorry about that. Coal goes in the bed. They know that. There’s no excuse. If you document the rug thing, I’ll take it back to the office and we’ll get that worked out.“

"Yeah, sure,” the Necromancer snapped, crossing her arms over her chest, “like I’m going to cop to the NSA about owning a rug.”

The Krampus offered a sheepish grin.

“You guys gotta have a Do Not Call registry,” the Trashmagician said. "You can’t just mess with everybody who’s been – ah, labelled, 'naughty.’“

"I’m not even a Christmas celebrant!” the Necromancer added. "I’m contractually bound to an Elder Thing. I don’t recognize Yule on this planet.“

"Yeah, but you’re an American,” the Krampus said. "This is a secular thing.“

The Necromancer writhed in fury. She seized a cookie and chucked it at the Krampus. It bounced off of his furry chest.

"I will not be made to choose between my citizenship and a clean rug!” she shrieked. "I have a right to a secure and unmolested home! I will not quarter foreign coal in peacetime or in war!“

"We’ll take you to court,” the Trashmagician added. "Even if it’s not a violation of religious liberties, you can’t argue with the Third Amendment.“

"You’re bluffing,” the Krampus said with a scowl. "We know everything about you. You don’t know any lawyers.“

"Take your panopticon and shove it! We have rights to self-representation!”

“I’ve got a basement full of dead lawyers!” the Necromancer scoffed. "Statesmen, too! I’ll sue the horns off you, and I’ll roast your boss’ holly-jolly ass on an open fire! Are you hearing me, Nicholas? I’ll take this to the Supreme Court!“

"I mean, who knows how many other people you’ve labelled 'naughty’ despite religious exemption? As if spying on the American public wasn’t bad enough. It’s a class-action suit you got on your hands, buddy,” the Trashmagician added. "The People v. Santa Claus. You thought Edward Snowden was bad.“

The Krampus was looking increasingly nervous. "This is ridiculous. You can’t sue Santa! Public opinion will never abide it.”

“Right, because the American people love fat bearded men in red,” the Necromancer growled.

The Krampus’ eyes widened. "W-What are you talking about?“

"Communism, you son of a bitch,” the Trashmagician said. "We see through your Black Friday gambit. Good will and sharing and community – it’s nigh onto Bolshevism!“

"We espouse family traditions, that’s all!” the Krampus snapped.

“Soviet horse-twaddle!” the Necromancer raged. "Everyone knows the old bastard is a damned Cossack! We brought him in during the Cold War and you know it!“

"There’s no proof of it!” the Krampus roared. "McCarthy didn’t dare!“

"Let’s see what a court of law thinks about your dark little back-alley dealings,” the Necromancer hissed. "Spying on your own citizens! Seeding communism!“

"Laying siege to Thanksgiving,” the Trashmagician added.

“A nobler holiday than yours!” the Necromancer snarled.

“This is a witch-hunt!” the Krampus snapped.

“Gee, Nec, and when was the last time a German got involved in home invasion?”

The Krampus glowered. "What are you suggesting.“

"Just speculating that Stalingrad must’ve been a blow,” the Trashmagician said archly.

The Krampus spluttered. "I was never a member of the Party! Disgusting! You want to talk about deserving coal!“

"I doubt the US government wants it getting out that they’re harboring war criminals!”

“Didn’t Tom Lehrer write a song about that?”

“You have no proof of any of this!” the Krampus shrieked.

“Oh, we don’t need it! When we pull this all out in the light, the publicity smear will bust you and your holiday down to shit-tier so fast, you’ll be rubbing elbows with Talk Like A Pirate Day!” the Necromancer cried.

The Krampus shuddered. "You–you’re bluffing.“

"There’s an easy way to make this go away,” the Trashmagician said coldly. "You take this house off your list. You take out the bugs. We establish a blackout on the perimeter, and we don’t drag you out into the public sphere and kick all the holiday glitter out of you.“

"You’re holding an American tradition hostage! For what!”

“Privacy,” the Trashmagician said grandly.

“And clean rugs.”

“And the constitutional right to clean rugs,” the Trashmagician conceded.

The Krampus hung there from the chandelier for a few moments. "I need to talk to the home office.“

"No deal,” the Necromancer said. "We’re bugged. We know they can hear us now. If you so much as cross that threshold, we’re calling a lawyer.“

The Krampus glowered. The Trashmagician and the Necromancer glowered back. The Trashmagician handed the Necromancer back the pool cue.

The Krampus reluctantly touched his left ear with his fingertips.

"Rippled glass,” he said at last.

“Pardon?” the Trashmagician asked.

“Get rippled glass on the windows,” the Krampus snarled. "It’ll block the laser microphones.“

"Where the hell–”

“Christmas lights,” the Krampus said, rolling his eyes.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, okay. Steam the stamps off of your Christmas cards before you bring them in the house.”

“SICK.”

“Whatever. Oh, no mistletoe. No greenery of any kind, really. Especially not a fake tree. No decorations.”

“You’ll pry that Sam the Snowman doll from my cold, dead hands.”

“Fine. Just pull out all his stuffing, chuck it, give the skin a wash, and stuff it with new fiberfill. No candy canes.”

“Well, duh.”

“Hey, you wanna be thorough or what?”

“What else?”

The Krampus nodded at the Trashmagician. "You wanna do a cleanse or something, I figure. Maybe a no-frills protection circle, if you want. After so many years there’s bound to be a residual buzz, but that’d nuke it.“

"Uh-huh.”

“We’ll have a contract sent along in a day or so,” the Krampus said. "You won’t be able to miss the courier. He’ll come up to your knees or so. You’ll surrender your right to litigate.“

"Fine.”

“We’ll arrange to have you removed from the visitation list.”

“Good.”

“Now, let me down.”

The Trashmagician bounced up the steps and loosened the rope snare. The Krampus caught himself on his hands and tugged at the loop around his ankles, rubbing to encourage circulation again.

“We should drink on this,” the Necromancer said. "It’s an accord. That’s what you do when you make an accord. In America.“

"A pint of virgin blood would be great, thanks,” the Krampus said.

“You can’t give him a drink,” the Trashmagician said, aghast. "That’s giving aid and comfort to the enemy!“

"I don’t think he’s an enemy of America, precisely. He’s on an American payroll,” the Necromancer said.

“That doesn’t mean anything!”

“We still have to drink! We negotiated a treaty.”

“Well…fine. But give him something he doesn’t like, so it’s not comforting.”

“Can’t stand a pint of virgin blood,” the Krampus said.

“Great. Beearbs,” the Necromancer said, disappearing into the kitchen.

“I hate this time of year,” the Krampus grumbled.

“Seriously,” the Trashmagician nodded.

“What do the lyrics in Last Christmas even mean?” the Krampus asked. "Three hundred years ago, you could really give someone a heart! Just rip it out of a child’s chest and pop it on the doorstep.“

"Them were the salad days,” the Necromancer said. She chucked a can of beer up to the Trashmagician and passed the Krampus a mug. "Prost.“

* * *

 

In the morning, the Trashmagician went out on the back porch to start making a cleansing barrier.

There was a great big sack of coal waiting on the deck. She picked up the tag, wondering how she was going to break this to the Necromancer, only to discover that it wasn’t for the Necromancer at all. It was addressed to her.

"Dear Janet, Fallacy of reductio ad Hilterum,” the note said. "Very naughty. – Santa"

The Trashmagician crumpled up the tag.

At least they had all year to work on the traps. She wondered how hard it would be to hammer nails into the pool cue.


	7. Burning Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Witches

The Trashmagician burst out laughing and very nearly upset the pint glass she was filling with pale golden cider from a tap. “Sam, are you kidding me? They’re literally pin heads: look at their hats. They can’t do beans. They’re just cat ladies with delusions of grandeur.”

Sam Diamonds, PI, occupied a crevice between the corner of the wall and the end of the bar every night. The atmosphere was perfect— dark, smoky, faintly disreputable— and the whiskey was truly vile. He’d been a regular long before the Trashmagician had started working there, and even before it was called Spirits. He always got in early, to make sure no one could challenge his claim to his desirable crevice real estate, and he only ever talked to the staff and the Necromancer. Tonight, he had made the fatal mistake of asking about witches.

“Yo. Janet. Are you gonna stand there laughing or are you gonna give me my cider?” grumbled the Necromancer. She was perched blithely on a stool right in front of the taps, with her back to the door. Sam didn’t know how she could stand it.

“Yo?” The Trashmagician pushed the drink across the bar to her and took a deep breath. “Listen, Sam, grubbing around chewing on roots and putting crystals in your sock drawer doesn’t prove anything except that you’ve bought Raven Silverwolf’s con. The witch-cult hypothesis makes me want to throw up. You might as well go straight back to the Golden Bough if you’re going to try to link everything together like that.”

The Necromancer became conscious of a curious sensation as of filled space behind her right shoulder.

“Magic does not require a k,” the Trashmagician went on. “Why is there a k? What does it mean, besides that you’ve read too much Aleister Crowley? And then, I mean, what exactly is supposed to be so magical about dancing in the altogether? If it were true, you’d think you’d find high concentrations of background magic near strip clubs on Saturday night. And you don’t. I’ve checked.”

This time there was a small cough, and three heads swiveled to see a young lady in an artfully tattered black dress looming at the end of the booth. She had so many rings and bangles on her skinny hands that Sam had trouble believing she could lift them higher than her waist.

“The goth club’s on the next block, dear,” said the Necromancer. “Sam, stop. Don’t talk about witches, it’ll only set her off. You were interested in the other night?”

Sam tossed back the last of his whiskey and fished a battered black leatherette notebook and a grubby pencil stub out of the recesses of his clothing. “Yeah, did you get anything out of him?”

“Well, the hinges were really rusty and—” The Necromancer tossed her head and cut the young woman behind her a sharp look. “Go away, Sabrina, the adults are talking.”

The young lady in the artfully tattered black dress stayed where she was, one fist clenched, the other gripping her glass so hard that Sam began to worry she would crush it, chin jutting out slightly.

“Excuse me, miss. Can I assist you with something? Do you require another drink? Perhaps you’d like me to call an Uber for you?” asked the Trashmagician.

The witch tilted her head while carefully maintaining the chin jut. “No, no. I’m just trying to figure out what your damage is, exactly.”

The Trashmagician leaned her elbows on the bar and stared hard. “Listen, weird sister, do you know who I am?”

The witch looked taken aback. “No.”

The Trashmagician nodded and picked up her rag, wiping across the counter. “Good.”

“Um. Should I?”

“Nope. Not at all. Sam, what are you having?”

“Is a bear Catholic? The bourbon.”

“Hey, Salem.” The Trashmagician called over her shoulder as she poured Sam’s drink. “You’re making these nice people nervous, looming over them like that, so double double toil and fuck off, or there’ll really be trouble. Capiche?”

* * *

“Looks like the ginseng is coming along nicely.” The Necromancer blew out a somewhat lopsided smoke ring as she surveyed the backyard.

The beds had bounced back from the last time a suspiciously six-foot-long-by-two-foot-wide space had been dug up, but the spearmint was taking advantage of the power vacuum to move in on the rosemary’s turf, and the belladonna was seizing territory in the no man’s land between it and the ginseng.

“It has made an astonishing recovery, all things considered.” The Trashmagician grabbed her trug and the kitchen scissors off the windowsill. She stepped out onto the porch and staggered into the doorframe as her right leg buckled under her. The Necromancer started back as the trug and the scissors landed on her foot.

“What the fuck,” whispered the Trashmagician, hauling herself upright against the wall.

The Necromancer bent down and picked up the gardening tools automatically. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

The other leg folded and the Trashmagician collapsed to her knees on the deck with a strangled cry.

“I don’t know,” she hissed, a difficult feat for a sentence totally without sibilants. “Maybe it’s my patellae.”

“What, both of them?”

The Trashmagician stared muzzily up at the Necromancer for a while before responding. “Yes. Both of them. Now help me up, asshole— oh god.” She doubled over as white-hot pain lanced through her stomach.

“Um—” The Necromancer dithered forward and back for a moment before seizing the Trashmagician by her shoulders and lowering her to the deck. “Uh, should I get a doctor? Usually I just do a hard shutdown and reboot. I’m not too good at this whole, you know, experiencing pain thing.” There was a click.

“And here I had been so sure that you must have been frequently and loudly accused of being one,” said the Trashmagician weakly. “And put the knife away.”

“What knife?” the Necromancer asked innocently.

“I think,” said the Trashmagician, trying to speak without moving her neck, “that if you look closely you will see that there is an elegant ladies’ stiletto knife altogether too close to my carotid sinus. I think you may also find that it is in your hand. This strikes me as quite likely, since I am certainly not holding a finely-honed blade to my own throat. Make it go away.”

The Necromancer looked at the pearl-handled switchblade she was pressing against the Trashmagician’s throat as if she had never seen it before. “What, this knife?”

“Yes. That knife. Put it away. This is metaphysical. And I like this shirt.”

“I’m just trying to help,” whined the Necromancer. She reluctantly folded her knife away and slipped it back into her pocket. “C’mon.”

* * *

The Necromancer ran her hands through her hair. “This would be so much easier if you’d just let me—”

“That’s not even gonna work.” The Trashmagician was lying on the floor of her study. Getting up the stairs had been a challenge, and now she was gazing helplessly up at the rope ladder that lead up into the attic room and the safety of the Fuck Off circle. “Oh god. No way. Not happening.”

“Why won’t it work? I don’t have to use a knife, you know. We could hang you instead, or anything you like.”

The Trashmagician put a hand to her throat defensively. “Ew. No. Hanging’s undignified. I’d turn blue. Thrash around—”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“—anyway, it’s the body that’s the problem. You can do a system reboot and wipe my hard drive but that doesn’t change the device’s MAC address, you know.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s the DNA, dinosaur. That’s why they need hair or fingernails.”

“Are you sure? It could just be the evil eye.”

The Trashmagician pulled a chain out of her shirt and waved a coral cornetto and an aquamarine mano figa at the Necromancer. “Ain’t no malocchio getting through this. Anyway, that’s just like metaphysical flu. It’s not specific. This has got to be a voodoo doll. Spukhafte action-at-a-distance.”

“So we have another force to integrate into the Unification Theory.”

The Trashmagician made an alarming wheezing kind of wail as the pain shot through her knees again. “You enjoy that. You got Azazel or anything, or do you think you’re good to go up there?”

“Should be ok. What’s your scheme?”

“In the truck there should be a block and tackle and some rope. Go get it.”

* * *

The Necromancer, this time sufficiently free of metaphysical hitchhikers to pass through the circle, pulled herself through the trapdoor and into the attic.

“So. What have we learned?”

The Trashmagician swept a pile of papers off the futon and leaned back. “Well, sometimes the witch is actually a witch, for one thing. Here.” She passed the hookah hose to the Necromancer. “Pull up some floor. Take that cushion.”

The Necromancer flopped down on a ragged cushion sewn all over with little mirrors. She poked at one fussily. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Yeah man, the fuck off circle acts like a sort of metaphysical Faraday cage. Nothing’s coming out of those mirrors.”

“I see.”

“That’s why we’re up here. I’ve got to stay in here until I’m sure I know how to fend off this— whatever it is.”

The Necromancer exhaled a puff of watermelon-scented smoke. “Do you think it’s a spell or what?”

“Nah,” said the Trashmagician, busy affixing a second hose to the hookah. “Sympathetic magic.”

The Necromancer wrinkled her nose. “A sympathetic icepick to the knee.”

“Not in the emotional sense. The projection of the mind across the space that divides beings, dude. Adam Smith and shit. Fellow-feeling.”

The Necromancer pfted and did a bad George Takei impression. “Oh my.”

“Stop.”

“Well, thanks very much to the Warlock Smith for these, uh, icepicky condolences. Only thing we get out of this is the slightly more ironclad notion that solipsism can suck it,” the Necromancer said. “Go team.”

“I mean economic policy is and has always been nothing more arcane chanting and criminal arithmancy.”

“Okay but how did she get your hair?”

“Probably just picked it off my jacket. It was hanging beside the bar on a peg.”

The Necromancer considered. “How do we defend against someone sticking pins in a poppet then? Can you make a voodoo doll of yourself?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, well what if you made it a little suit of plate armor?”

“Interesting. I’m not sure I wouldn’t feel as if I were dragging around an extra forty pounds, but it’s worth a try, certainly. Hand me that.”

The Necromancer passed her a long wooden box, which, when opened, proved to contain a number of pre-prepared poppets and a sewing kit.

“Bugger,” said the Trashmagician. “Could you go grab me some aluminium foil out of the kitchen? I don’t dare. Second drawer down, left of the oven.”

A short time later the Necromancer flopped through the trapdoor and handed over a roll of Reynolds wrap. She watched as the Trashmagician tore off a sheet and began deftly cutting little armor pieces out of the foil and sticking them to the poppet with fabric glue.

“Wait,” the Necromancer said eventually, “what if you made a poppet of the witch and put only very dull pins in her hand?”

The Trashmagician considered. “No. Wouldn’t work. I’d have to make effigies of the pins themselves, and the blunt the ends.”

“That might do it.”

The Trashmagician put down her scissors and took a long drag on the hookah. “No, it wouldn’t, because I’d have to have a scrap of the pin metal to make the effigies, and at that point I might as well just break in and steal the poppet. Or rather, you might as well break in and steal the poppet.”

“Plate armor,” said the Necromancer.

* * *

The Necromancer stumped up the garden path towards the next door neighbor’s side door. She skirted a sedum that was making a territorial advancement into the path and knocked. There was some shuffling from inside and the door creaked open. The neighbor, in a fluffy black bathrobe, bare feet, and a cup of coffee, peered blearily out through the screen.

“Um. Good morning?” said the Necromancer. “You don’t happen to get a newspaper with Times in the title?”

The neighbor stared.

“Look I don’t make a habit of snooping on people’s news habits. It’s all one to me if you read the National Review or Mother Jones. I ain’t no snitch.”

“I get the New York Times.”

“Jeez, you must be practically a communist. Fantastic.”

There was a pause.

“Got any old issues you’re willing to recycle?”

“Only if you’re using them to usher in the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

“What do you think I do all day?”

The neighbor considered. “On the balance I rather think it’s safer not to speculate.”

“You may be right.”

“Okay, hang on a sec, I’ll grab them.”

* * *

“Hey, Sam?” asked the phone.

Sam Diamonds reluctantly put down his coffee cup. “What’s happened now, Janet?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m wearing plate armor. She can’t get me.”

“You’re wearing plate armor,” said Sam slowly.

“Only metaphysically. And only when I go out. Right now I’m in the attic.”

“Cell service gets past the circle? I’ve been meaning to ask about the circle, by the way, isn’t that—”

The phone sighed. “Yes, YES, fuck’s sake, I got it from Hellblazer, I know. People keep telling me.”

“Okay, forget I mentioned it.”

“I’m holding it against you. Besides, electromagnetic radiation is only magic in a metaphorical sense.”

“Spooky fernwirkung.”

“That’s quantum.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I thought magic was a metaphor. Or metaphors were magic, if that means something different.”

“Yes but electromagnetic radiation isn’t a metaphor.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, but quantum might be. Look, I need you to find out for me who the witch is and where she lives. True names, for preference, although that may be difficult, depending on how many times she’s been round the standing stone circle, so to speak.”

“The witch?”

The phone sighed again. “Yeah, from last night? I thought you gumshoe types were supposed to have good memories.”

“That is slander. My shoes are leather-soled. Okay, I’m on it. Meet me over there, we might be able to get some information off the receipts or the register.”

“Yeah, coming.”

* * *

An hour or so later the Trashmagician trudged exhausted up the front steps and leaned on the bell. Sure enough, the armored poppet seemed to be doing its work, and sure enough she felt as if she was dragging a suit of exquisitely intaglioed fourteenth century plate around with her. She and Sam had managed to find the bar copy of the witch’s bill, which bore the name Rachel Jackson. Sam was on the trail.

The Necromancer finally wrenched the door open and the Trashmagician stumbled into the hallway.

“Well, you’re not actually clanking.”

“There is that. Any luck with the papers?”

“In the truck already.”

“Rad.” The Trashmagician goggled wearily at the flight of stairs unfolding before her. “I’m going back inside the fuck-off circle for a while. I’ll holler when Sam gets back to me with the goods.”

* * *

Rachel Jackson opened her door to a tower of crackling green flames. On the concrete stoop, a pile of back issues of the New York Times was merrily ablaze. After a moment she sighed.

“Hilarious.”

Whoever had rung the doorbell was nowhere in sight. She turned back inside to fetch a bucket of water.


	8. Batting a Thousand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Vampires

They lost power in the neighborhood on the first really cold night of the year. The Trashmagician diligently put all the ice cream and frozen goods out on the porch, so they wouldn’t spoil in the relative warmth of the house. The Necromancer pulled out her extensive collection of spa candles and set them up, leaving some rooms actually brighter than they had been before the power outage.

Blankets came out of the bedrooms and they closed all the drapes, trying to barricade themselves against the chill. Cold reminded the Necromancer of witch trials, being dead, and Massachusetts, and the Trashmagician had the thin and watery blood of an anemic Mediterranean snake.

“Stupid shitty season,” the Trashmagician groused, pulling on her third pair of socks. “Stupid shitty degrees.”

“This household is pro-higher education,” the Necromancer said. “We approve of advanced degrees.”

“Plummeting temperatures indicate a lack of dutiful attention to the health of the country. We are clearly in a tailspin. There’s frost outside. What the hell is it doing out there? Frost belongs in an icebox.”

“My family did not leave the Old World for wintry bullshit.”

“Neither did mine!”

“But yours is a special case. What clan of idiots trade Sicily for Georgia?”

“We don’t like fascists.”

“So you came to Georgia. Well done indeed. Are you hungry?”

“No, I had soup before the power quit. There’s some on the stove, if you want it.”

“Thank you, I’ll pass. Have a little cheese, though.”

The Necromancer spread out a supper of charcuteries while the Trashmagician set about building a fire in the fireplace. She opened the damper of the chimney and frowned at the loud scuttling noise she heard within.

“Bats migrate, don’t they?” she asked the Necromancer.

“Of course. Just like any other bird.”

The Trashmagician squinted at her. "Bats are mammals.“

The Necromancer crisply nipped a gherkin in half. "Birds. Look in Leviticus.”

“Leviticus is not a reliable biological resource text.”

“All I know is that Simon Orne has served at least one of every unclean bird on his table, and many is the time we’ve eaten some extremely succulent Cornish game bats.”

The Trashmagician opened her mouth to reply with a question about what sauce he used for bat, but a ghastly, gnarled white hand reached out from the chimney and wrapped around the lintel. Question forgotten, the Trashmagician made a long “aaaaah” noise as a horrible, emaciated face peeped out, red lips peeled away from needle-like teeth and white eyes staring blindly out of their sockets.

The Trashmagician fell back on her butt and scooted rapidly across the floor, staring at the horrible thing as it crawled out of the chimney. The thing’s sooty opera cape dangled from around its neck as it clambered up onto the wall, clawed fingers and pointed-toe Oxford shoes skittering.

The Necromancer let out a little shriek and dove for a blanket. "It’ll get caught in my hair!“

"Shh!” the Trashmagician hissed, heart hammering. The thing made a shrill shriek and turned around so its head pointed to the ground. Its cape hung down over one side of its neck and it tilted its head back to face them. It hissed at them and skittered higher up the wall.

“I’m going to get gloves,” the Trashmagician said in a mumble. "I think it’s a vampire.“

"Of course it’s a vampire,” the Necromancer snarled. "How did it get in my chimney?“

"I guess you could ask it,” the Trashmagician snapped.

“It’s a dumb brute!”

“What does Leviticus say about vampires?”

“That they get in your hair!”

The vampire let out a shriek and leapt off the wall. It flapped madly across the room, knocking down a painting or two and kicking a vase before it bonked into a wall and fell in a tumble to the floor, behind the couch.

The Necromancer whirled around on the sofa and peered at it. "I think it’s stunned.“

"We’re scaring it,” the Trashmagician said. "It must not be able to tell where it is. We should open a window.“

"No! More will get in! You never get just one vampire. There must be a flock of them in the chimney.”

“I thought they went in covens.”

“Vampires are birds! Close the damper!”

“Birds? Does that mean you’ve eaten one?”

“Of course not! They’re not unclean! Now, close the damn damper!”

The Trashmagician scooted back across the floor and twisted the damper, just in time to hear the skuttling of more claws. "Yikes. Must have a countess or two in there.“

"Flocks,” the Necromancer said decisively. “We need a net.”

“No way! You saw those claws. It’ll shred through it. What we need is to leave a trail of blood leading into a coffin. Or a bathtub.”

“I’m not going to waste good blood on this thing! Maybe we can just wrap it in a towel and throw it out?”

The vampire was twitching on the floor, clawing at the air a bit and mewling.

“I hope it didn’t concuss itself,” the Trashmagician said. "Last thing we need is a stunned vampire lying on the lawn.“

"There goes the neighborhood.”

“Maybe it’ll eat the stray cats.”

The Necromancer turned a whiter shade of pale. "Oh God, the sphinx!“

"No, it’s cool. I put the Commodore upstairs. He’ll be okay.”

The Necromancer nodded. "Well, we’re just going to have to–ghk!“

The vampire sprang up from the floor with an impossible flex of its muscles and hurled itself at the Necromancer. It seized her by the shoulders and slammed her into the coffee table, breaking the table and sending coasters flying. The vampire shrieked in her face and snapped its head down, ripping into her neck as she beat on it with both hands, feet kicking in the air.

The Trashmagician let out a little grunt and grabbed the empty wine bottle, hopping over to bludgeon the thing. The vampire lifted its head up and hissed at her, and the Trashmagician could see that its face was covered, not in blood, but in dark dust.

Black sand was gushing out of the Necromancer’s neck. She was looking remarkably unimpressed.

"Oh, my God,” the Trashmagician said. "Seriously?“

"Whack it!” the Necromancer bellowed.

The Trashmagician swung hard and clocked the vampire right in the side of the head. The bottle broke against its head, showering the Necromancer in falling glass, and the vampire fell off of her. The Trashmagician followed it, weaponless and peering at it warily.

“I think it’s unconscious,” she said, relieved.

The Necromancer struggled upwards, covering the bite with her hand.

“Dust,” the Trashmagician said to her. "Your blood’s gone to dust. Really.“

"I’ve been busy,” the Necromancer replied. "And anyway, dust is easier to clean up.“

"Hey, you’ll be cleaning it up, so whatever works. Right now, we need a stake.” The Trashmagician cast about for a sharp piece of wood. Sofa, chair – ah, end table.

The Necromancer took one look at her and skuttled in front of the Queen Anne end table, legs spread and expression as ferocious as a lioness protecting her cub. "Get that horrible look off your face!“

"It’s got slender legs!” the Trashmagician protested. "I’m just saying we scootch a foot over its chest and then lean down!“

"You have to leave the stake in,” the Necromancer said, “and I’m not about to have to shift him every time I want to rearrange the room! Just wait here and don’t touch anything. I have some sort of vile mid-century trinket we can whack apart.”

The Necromancer disappeared through the doorway and the Trashmagician picked up the fire poker and kept watch on the dazed corpse on the floor. When the Necromancer returned, her throat was bandaged and she handed the Trashmagician a table leg.

“You’ve done this before?” the Necromancer asked.

“No. But I beat up a Hot Topic kid in middle school. Keep an eye on him for me, will you? I’m gonna go get something.”

“All right.”

The Trashmagician went and fetched a few things from her bedroom, and came back wearing the better part of a suit of armor.

“Ooh,” the Necromancer said in approving tones. She slipped into the hallway.

“Do you think they have courses you can take on vampire-slaying?” the Trashmagician called, as she walked over to the vampire. “Like a weekend course or something. Get my certification and hang up a shingle, yeah?”

“It’d be an interesting part-time job. Good way to meet people,” the Necromancer agreed, reappearing with a dustbuster in hand. She ran it over the spray of blood dust besmirching the sofa. “And I suppose you can name your price.”

“I think the only other people who volunteer to kill vampires are elderly scholars and such,” the Trashmagician said, gingerly flipping the vampire onto its back.

“And high schoolers. Cheerleaders.”

The Trashmagician picked away at the vampire’s clothes, opening a spot where she wouldn’t have to push through antique brocade and fine linen. “Something about academia brings out the basic human desire to brutally mutilate corpses. Why do you think that is?”

“A deep mystery. I know that I would vastly prefer to have a certified professional take care of the issue. Like I’d let a teenager into my attic.”

“Talk about an infestation,” the Trashmagician agreed, and set the toe of the table leg above the vampire’s heart. She took a deep breath and threw her whole weight on the stake.

The vampire woke up.

The damn thing was horribly strong, and though she lunged on the spike, it wasn’t sharp enough to penetrate the vampire’s leathery skin. The vampire grabbed her by the wrist and threw her back, following its screaming victim and ripping away the plate around her neck.

The Trashmagician shrieked swears and curses, shouting gruesome prayers in the thing’s face as it snapped its head down. The Necromancer tore across the room, holding the dustbuster like a chainsaw, but the vampire already had its teeth in the Trashmagician’s neck.

It bit hard, filling its mouth with fast-gushing red blood. It made nasty slurping sounds against her neck, and the Trashmagician screamed angrily and kicked at it, thrashing violently beneath it.

“Fuck you fuck you fuck you!”

The Necromancer held the dustbuster aloft and brought it down to strike, when the vampire abruptly stopped.

It sat up, staring out of blind eyes, and opened its mouth. Blood trickled out between its teeth and it began to whimper loudly, body convulsing. The Necromancer whacked it in the head and it fell over, seizing on the floor and crying quietly.

“What the hell?” the Necromancer mumbled, staring at it. It vomited a little red ooze onto the floor and writhed in agony. “Oh, gross!”

“It bit me!” the Trashmagician shrieked.

The Necromancer looked at her. “Uh, yeah. Put a band aid on it?”

“I could use some help!”

“Remember last time? I don’t think you want me to help heal you.”

“Not that kind of help, you wang!” The Trashmagician shakily pointed a dripping hand at the kitchen. “There’s a panacea in the pantry. It’s in the quilted jam jars.”

The Necromancer peered at the vampire as she slipped into the kitchen and came back with a green smoothie and a dark brown dishtowel. They were agreed that the towels were hideous, but they certainly did spare them the embarrassment of stains.

The Trashmagician cracked the smoothie’s lid and took a long gulp.

The Necromancer crouched down beside the vampire. It had gone silent and still. She reached out and put her hand in its mouth.

“Don’t fucking –” the Trashmagician rasped.

The Necromancer picked up the table leg and jabbed the vampire with it. It didn’t move or respond, not even when she slapped it in the face and jabbed it five or six more times.

“I think it’s dead,” the Necromancer said. “What the fuck. What is the matter with your blood?”

“I don’t know! The fact that I have about a half pint less of it than I should?” the Trashmagician asked, slurping the panacea with a shudder. “Maybe it doesn’t like Italians.”

The Necromancer squinted at her. “What, exactly, was that soup you made for dinner?”

The Trashmagician choked a little on her panacea. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“What?!”

“Zuppa d’aglio.” The Trashmagician winced a smile. “That’s right, you can’t smell very well.”

“When I’m not paying attention, my connection to the olfactories wavers,” the Necromancer shrugged. “Well. That’s a solution, then. When the power comes on, we’ll make a vat of soup.”

“No.”

“Oh yes.”

“This is a blasphemous use of soup.”

“Noted. We’ll have to brew up a little more panacea, too. I’ll start rehydrating my blood.”

The Trashmagician sighed. “While you’re up, you better put that thing in a closet, so the Commodore doesn’t get at it before we can burn it.”

Commodore Mittens liked eating eyes. And bones. And everything, really. They had a squirt bottle for when he went after one of the Necromancer’s experiments.

* * *

In the end they were both bitten five times. The bites itched like the dickens, but each of them could take a turn in the sunshine with no appreciable damage, and with a few bottles of mouthwash they had no problems at all. By the end of the week they had a clean chimney and a pile of well-dressed, emaciated corpses stacked up in the backyard.

The neighbor had a jug of gasoline.

The neighbor reached into the pile of corpses in the backyard and gingerly picked up a limp, diamond-encrusted wrist. The neighbor shook it and watched the fingers flop. “Say, d’you mind if I…?”

“Go nuts,” the Trashmagician said. “We’ve got an opera cape in the living room for you to look at, if you want it.”

The neighbor pocketed the diamond bracelet with a smile.

“These really are vampire corpses, by the way,” the Necromancer said to the neighbor. “Not just a family of stylish starvation victims that we found in the attic.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“Does anybody remember the restrictions on burning trash in this city?” the Trashmagician asked, putting the empty gasoline can to the side.

“Nope.”

“I guess this is more of a barbeque, isn’t it?” the Trashmagician amended. “I mean, we hunted them and killed them, right? And this is kind of an elaborate cooking ritual.”

“Sure, yeah,” the neighbor said. “Call it well-done.”

The Necromancer flicked on a Zippo lighter and cast it into the pile.

It caught with a loud _whumpf._

“I lose more Zippos this way, I swear,” the Necromancer murmured.

The vampires didn’t have much in the way of hair, and dehydrated as they were they burned quick and hot. They smelled mostly like burning leaves and there was very little bursting or oozing, which was awfully nice.

It took a couple of burns to get them really all down to ashes, but that was all right. The neighbor also had marshmallows.


	9. Shitſhow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Necromancers

The door of Spirits creaked laboriously open and the Trashmagician glanced up, pausing in the act of tracing the last line of a sigil inside the loop of a water ring.

An extremely old man with a cane staggered in, dressed in a slightly shapeless tweed suit that gave him the look of a dotty English professor. He leaned on another man, this one middle-aged and very handsomely dressed, his hair and moustache still dark despite his receding hairline and the crow’s feet crinkling at the edges of his clear brown eyes. The man with the cane kept glancing back at an even more decrepit body that followed them into the bar, bound to a wheelchair and wearing a tartan hat, scarf, and lap blanket over his button-up and jeans. Both of the old men’s faces were grooved with deep wrinkles, their sparse white eyebrows stuck out over pale and slightly shiny eyes. The man in the wheelchair was blind and all three were both roaring with laughter over something or another.

The Necromancer was pushing the wheelchair. 

“Janet!” the man in the wheelchair cried. "Janet, ce mai faci?“

"Engliſh, Hutch,” the Necromancer said. 

“Ah, ha, ha ha! Da, da, Neſs, f-forgive me, t'is become my habitry with the damned Roumanians! Janet, I ſwear I ſmelt thy perfume! Where ar'ſt, my girl? Sing out!”

“Hi, Hutch,” the Trashmagician said. "It’s not perfume.“

"Sage is perfume enough for queens,” Hutch replied. The Trashmagician and the Necromancer exchanged bleh faces over the old man’s head.

“Why pu’ſt thou the draft, Janet?” the man with the cane demanded. The middle-aged man beside him let out a sharp, high giggle and the man with the cane struggled up onto bar stools. "We need drinks, lady, we are grown phthiſical in this rancid Air!“

"Did you all fly in on the same plane?” the Trashmagician asked.

“Pft!” the man with the cane said, leaning into the middle-aged man and giving him an elbow. "Nay! The old foole wouldn’t fly. Cannot get with the times – look at his ſhoes when you get the chance and ſee what I mean. Who but Simon Orne takes a boat from Prague and then a train from New Amsterdam? Neſs! Lady, let me take thy coat off.“ 

"Th'art ſtill banned from touching my clothes, Joe,” the Necromancer replied. She locked Hutch’s chair into place at the bar and moved away to strip off and hang up her fur, while Simon came over to squat down by Hutch and make some complicated adjustments to his chair.

“Behold Simon,” Hutch crooned, gesturing to him, “taking care of the younger lads e’en as he did in the ſeventies. The old man haſt the hands and the heart of a mother.”

“Aye, and in the ſame jar,” Simon replied. He hit a lever and the seat of Hutch’s chair shot up, putting him abreast with the others. Simon took his place once more and all of them grinned at the Trashmagician with variously healthy teeth.

“Boy, I can’t wait to see you people drunk,” the Trashmagician drawled. "What can I get you, then?“

"Dám si jedno pivo prosím,” the middle-aged man said.

“Engliſh, Simon,” the Necromancer insisted, perching herself on a stool.

“Beer it is,” the Trashmagician said. "Joe? Hutch?“

"Scotch!” Hutch said. He jerked a thumb at the Necromancer. "Această doamnă va plăti pentru tot!“

The Necromancer slapped him in the back of the head. "Beer, all, thanks. We need to ſtay ſharp.”

“Why, she asked, dreading the anſwer.” The Trashmagician’s mouth moued around the long s. Accent vampirism. Sam would find it riotous.

“Hutch has a diſtant couſin!” Simon said brightly.

“In a box, I ſuppose,” the Trashmagician muttered, sliding a cold glass across to Hutch.

“In an SUV. We’re going to pick him up at midnight,” Joe said. "Learnt a thing or two from the past few years. Going to ſee if we can just do a ſwap into a warm body.“

"That’d ſave ſome time,” the Trashmagician agreed.

“He ſtill has his original pancreas,” Hutch said proudly. "And his TEETH!“

"Fluoride’s a hell of a thing,” the Trashmagician said. "We’ll take you out for a ſteak after.“

"Skippin’ the months you have to take it red,” Joe said. He shook a gnarled but good-natured fist at Hutch. "Unſeemly. Ye hardly deſerve ſuch luxury.“

Hutch laughed in Joe’s direction. "I hath earn’t it and more than! Pray, brother, remember who ‘mongſt us were not diſsolved in the Merlin matter?”

“T'was Neſs,” Simon replied.

“And I!”

“Bah! Thou waſ’t thought dead and left to ſtarve til thou could’ſt command the gnawing worms enough to get back up!” Joe argued.

“…are you currently made up of worms?” the Trashmagician asked. "Becauſe we have health codes in this part of the world, dude, and the bar will bounce you if you’re all wormy and groſs.“

Hutch put a rattling finger to his lips and winked, and the Trashmagician watched something small and slimy run across the white of his eyeball. She tried not to hork. What was it with these guys and maggots? 

This is your body on Yog, she thought. It looks glamorous, sort of, until you’re all wormy and speaking bad Romanian. There was a lesson there.

"And I have not had a new Figure ſince,” Hutch replied. "I am well-due. Yet look on Simon! Mincing about with but 40 years on him. Curls his mouſtaches. I hath ſeen him do’t.“

"And that ſuit!” Joe chimed in. "Very dandified, Mr. Orne, ſir. Looking moſt pretty, indeed.“

Simon threw up both hands. "T'is not an unworthy indulgence for a man of my vintage to wear a good ſuit! T'is not even Givenchy!”

“And THOU,” Joe said, pointing at the Necromancer, “thou haſt ſwapped thy bits out who knows how oft! Looking as pearly as on thy wedding days, and on the ſame bones! Thou hath made thyſelf but one ſuit of clothes and hath worn it every ſeaſon hence.”

“And t'is a timeleſs cut!” the Necromancer argued. "I can care for what I have. You like to run to the firſt laboratory you can find and throw yourſelf in, without food or ſleep or water for some eighty years!“

"And would it make the difference, Neſs, if I had thy moſt enviable collection of creams and powders?”

“I would not tell you the brand of toner I uſed then and I won’t tell you what I uſe now,” the Necromancer sniffed. "Thy complexion would not benefit, for thou will not drink water.“

"Ha! Water-drinker, art thou? I ſay blood-bather.”

“And I ſay ye, Joseph Curwen, would rather drink blood for three months than keep thy ſkin from rotting. Thou prefer'st to be a cat-drinker.”

Joe turned pink. Simon began to snigger.

“Ha!” Hutch barked, slapping a brittle hand on the table. "So you were know to ſip on a puſs, hey?“

The Necromancer punched Hutch in the arm. "Cats, vulgarian. Literal cats.”

“I know what thou meanſt, Neſs, t’was by way of a double entendre.”

Joe writhed. "T'was the 1920s, damn you all, and I was freſh up! Everyone did it.“

"Cat-drinker!” Simon laughed. "Did that noodle of a nephew fetch them for you?“

Joe gave him another elbow. "Everyone did it!”

“Bits of Fluffy ſtuck in your throat!”

“T,” the Necromancer said, batting her eyes at the Trashmagician and getting a dark look in return, “he’ll want his favorite drink tonight. Would you be a ſtar and open him up a tabby?”

Simon and Hutch let out a boisterous chorus of shocked and awed “ohhhh!"s and generally caused a ruckus, ending with a round of slapping Joe on the back. He took it better than a lot of 90-some men would’ve, ending the ordeal with a few raking hacks and a pronounced wish that he had a third hand with which to flip them off.

They had three beers each and Joe insisted upon pulling a gold dubloon from behind the Trashmagician’s ear before the clock struck ten and they moved off in a talkative, carousing mass. When the Trashmagician returned home, past two a.m., the house was silent and not so much as a sob escaped Dol Guldur’s door.

In the morning, the Trashmagician stumped down to the DMZ for coffee and a nosh. There, she found Simon, Joe, the Necromancer, and a very handsome young man clustered around the kitchen table, gibbering in what sounded like nothing so much as really bad Latin. They lifted their mugs to her and offered her a seat.

Across the room, the dead and rigid body that had once belonged to Edward Hutchinson stood upright in the trashcan.

“Oh,” the Necromancer said, following her gaze. “Don’t worry. We’re going to take that out later.”

“No ſhit,” the Trashmagician said, and walked out of the kitchen.


	10. The McCarcible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Witch-Hunts

The accused sat in three straight-backed wooden chairs in the middle of the community center’s Zumba room. Karen thought the mirrored wall behind her added a pleasant kind of disorienting ambience but she really could’ve done without the energetic orange color on the far wall and the bright-colored, silhouetted dancer portraits.

Well, you couldn’t have everything. Karen looked around at the assembled inquisitors, all in their good suits, and nodded solemnly.

It was time to unmask the accused.

The man, who looked disquietingly like Albert Camus, seemed to take the situation pretty quietly and reacted as if he’d had a hood whipped off his head a few times before. He glanced around in a weary sort of way and licked his lips.

The long-haired woman’s hood came up without more fuss than a very profound scowl. She’d stopped whistling the Globetrotters theme some time before they tied her to the chair, and luckily she didn’t seem inclined to start up again just at the moment. Even so, the damage was done and Karen knew it would be weeks before she managed to get the tune out of her head.

But it was the other woman who gave them the real trouble.

Doug went to pull the other woman’s hood off from the chin, which wasn’t standard procedure anyway, and she managed to catch a finger in her teeth. Doug began to yell, but the young woman bit down hard and whipped her head back and forth, and after a few seconds she took half the finger off in a gush of red.

Karen stared from her place at the podium. Her mouth dropped open a little.

“Oh ew,” the long-haired woman said, watching with an expression of unpleasantly mild disdain. "Yeah, I guess the hood would mess with the hair, huh?“

The other woman spat the finger out and shook her head, letting it drop out of her hood and onto her lap.

“I don’t like getting kidnapped!” she shouted. "Also, hi, hey. What’s up?“

Doug, rage beginning to take over in the wane of shock, lifted a hand to the other woman’s hooded head and used some inappropriate language. The other woman pulled up her legs and kicked them out, swinging them around until she found Doug and started beating her heels into him. She screamed in an unrecognizable tongue and Karen hastily waved for Pete and Beth to pull Doug away.

The other woman stopped kicking and yelling when she realized Doug was gone.

The long-haired woman glanced over and spotted the man. The man wiggled his foot in a nonchalant wave.

“Hi, Sam,” the long-haired woman said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Sam shrugged. “This happens more often than you’d think.”

“Do you regularly get kidnapped?”

“Enough to consider it a bad habit, yeah.”

“Sam?” the other woman asked, head turning as if she could look through the bag. “Does this have anything to do with you, Sam?”

“I guess you could say I’m involved, yeah,” Sam said. “But I wouldn’t say I’m well-placed in this particular situation.”

“Do they have some kind of high school aptitude test that ranks how much satisfaction you’ll get out of a career that involves being tied to a chair on a regular basis?” the long-haired woman asked.

“Well, sure,” Sam said. “You wouldn’t want kids finding that out by experimenting.”

“Silence,” Karen said from the podium. The long-haired woman and Sam gave her some pretty flat looks. Karen tried to remember where she’d seen those kinds of expressions before.

Ah, yes. Fourth graders with authority issues. Great.

Karen waved at Pete and gestured at the other woman, embarrassed. Pete had the sense to lift her hood off from behind and out popped a face with a bloody mouth and a murderous pair of eyes.

“You ever been to a witch hunt before, Sam?” the long-haired woman asked.

“Silence,” Karen insisted.

“Nah,” Sam said. “I always meant to go to one, but I get busy.”

“Well, I’ve only been to one, but this ain’t Nec’s first rodeo, so just follow our lead.”

“‘Kay. I’m gonna need to bite off someone’s finger, if I’m going to catch up.”

Karen whacked the gavel on the podium. It was actually a crab mallet, but they’d stained it and it looked pretty convincing from a few feet off.

The other woman licked her lips.

Ew, Karen thought.

“We are beginning the trial,” Karen said. “Identify yourselves.”

“We are not witches,” the other woman announced.

“Yeah,” the long-haired woman nodded.

Karen banged her gavel and glared. They thought this was funny. “Identify yourselves for the court.”

“Last name, Witches, first name, Not,” the other woman snapped.

“You identify yourself,” the long-haired woman added.

“Peter,” Karen said. “Please read aloud the names of the accused.”

“Samuel Diamonds – sorry, Karen, we never managed to find his real name…”

“Proceed,” Karen muttered.

“Janet Scevola and…uh…Elynor Pickman, alias Leah Colqhoun, alias Jerusha Upton, alias Rebekah White, alias–”

“How many names are there?” Karen asked.

“We’re working on that,” Pete said. “This kind of goes deep. Lot of dead people names.”

“Fine,” Karen said. “Mr. Diamonds, Miss Scevola, Miss Pickman. Do you know why you are here?”

“No,” Elynor shouted, “on account of none of us being witches!”

“You’ll never convict! You can’t prove nothin’!”

Karen smacked the podium with her gavel and pointed it at the accused. “Are you now or have you ever been–”

“We are not witches, you shit!” Elynor screeched. “Let us go!”

“Yeah!” Janet agreed.

“Silence!” Karen barked, glowering at them all. “You will answer our questions. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”

The accused stared at Karen. Then they stared at each other. Then all three of them stared back at Karen.

“What,” Janet intoned.

“Answer the question!”

“No, really, what,” Elynor said, befuddlement cooling her temper. “What did you just say?”

“Are you now or have you ever been,” Karen said slowly, “a member of the Communist Party?”

Janet stared at Karen, then at Elynor, then at Sam. Sam and Elynor boggled at each other a little, and then all three of them looked up.

“This is a witch-hunt,” Sam said, in a rather high, strangled kind of voice. “Hoo-ac.”

“Answer the question!” Karen snapped.

“We don’t still have a Communist Party, do we?” Janet asked. “I mean, not a real one.”

“No, we got one,” Sam replied. “I mean, they do nothing–”

“They’re commies,” Janet drawled.

“–but we got one.”

“You can’t treat us like this! This is domestic terrorism!” Elynor shouted.

“Nah, bro,” Janet said, “it’s vigilante justice.”

Elynor stared at her. “Are you sure? It doesn’t seem very just.”

“That’s the thing about vigilante justice.”

“All I’m saying is that if I see a kangaroo, I’m outta here,” Sam said.

“I mean, they don’t want to stop us from doing what we’re doing,” Janet said.

“Yes, they do. We just don’t happen to be doing it.”

Karen banged the gavel. “Silence!”

“Okay, true,” Janet conceded, “but they’re not trying to scare us out of it. They’re just going to kill us.”

“Nah, they’re just going to rough us up,” Sam said.

“They have objections to our lifestyle!” Elynor said.

“They can be bigots and murderers–”

“Or ruffians.”

“Yeah, and still not be terrorists.”

“If they’re going to put us out for the ravens to chew on, even metaphorically speaking, I think that counts as a terrible warning to others,” Elynor replied. “Could be terrorism to the community at large.”

“Hmm. This wants analysis,” Janet said. “Where’s David Brooks when you need him?”

“ONE,” Karen shouted, beating the crab mallet down on the podium. “MORE. TIME.”

“Psh,” Janet huffed.

“Sam Diamonds. Have you now, or have you ever–”

“Nope.”

Karen took a breath. Better. “Do you now or have you ever belonged to any organization that is listed by the attorney general as subversive?”

Nobody said a thing.

“Mr. Diamonds,” Karen said. “Answer the question.”

“Can I get a list of the organizations that would be considered subversive?” Sam asked.

“Answer the question, Mr. Diamonds!”

“Seriously. What kind of organizations are we talking about here?” Sam pushed.

“You a commie?” Janet asked Sam.

“No.”

“You a Nazi?“

“I’m Jewish.”

“That could still count against you, depending on what the attorney general considers ‘subversive’,” Elynor said. “You a writer?”

“Ew, no.”

“Are you Black?” Janet asked.

Sam gave her a sad and plaintive look. “Where is the trust?”

“The women will be quiet! You’ll get your turns!” Karen snapped. “Mr. Diamonds, are you now or have you ever been a member of any organization that is listed by the attorney general as subversive?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Your knowledge?”

“Well, you’re not giving me a list, so: not to my definitionally incomplete knowledge. I’m not about to make some dumb generalization about it so you can trip my ass up later.”

Janet gave him an approving nod. “This ain’t your first Red round-up, is it?”

“I prefer to think of it as a pinko polka.”

“Mr. Diamonds,” Karen snapped. “Whose bumper sticker do you have on your car?”

“The ASPCA’s.”

“And?”

“NPR’s.”

“And?”

“‘Honk if you love honking.’”

“Mr. Diamonds. What political bumper stickers do you have?”

“Nader 2000–”

“Ewww,” the women chorused.

“Kerry 2004, Obamas ‘08 and ‘12, and Bernie Sanders 2016. All pasted on top of each other. It’s starting to cause drag.”

“Did you vote in the latest presidential primary?”

“Yeah.”

“And for whom did you vote?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Mr. Diamonds. Answer the question.”

“You don’t have to answer that,” Janet said.

“Thanks, councillor,” Sam replied, “but I think I got this one. I voted for Bernie Sanders.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Mr. Diamonds,” Karen said. “Tell me, what is Mr. Sanders’ political affiliation?”

“Currently? The Democratic Party.”

“And before that?’

“I never talked with the guy, but for most of his career he was an Independent.”

“And do you know how Mr. Sanders identifies his political leanings?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“As a democratic socialist.”

“Do you consider yourself a canny man, Mr. Diamonds?”

“That’s what it says on the card.”

“Does it really?” Elynor asked.

“Oh, yeah. ‘Canny Man for Hire. Can Canvass All Can-tries; Can Can-trol All Cantankerous Can-nubialists; Can Can-sider All Can-tingencies.’”

Janet gagged. “Oh my Goddd. Okay, lady, I’ll talk, I’ll talk – just as long as you kill that man!”

“Silence!” Karen said. “Would you consider yourself up on politics, Mr. Diamonds?”

“No, definitely not. Down with politics. Hurrah for the state of nature.”

“Do you read POLITICO, Mr. Diamonds?”

“Only when I’m forced to.”

“Do you, or do you not, own a MacNeill-Lehrer NewsHour mug?”

For the first time, Mr. Diamonds’ face held a hunted look. “Hey. It’s an heirloom.”

“A canny man,” Karen said, “in possession of an incriminating mug who admits to reading POLITICO: a leftist rag of lowest repute! And do you mean to tell me, Mr. Diamonds, that with all this information, you went out and voted for Bernie Sanders? A ‘democratic socialist,’ which is an utterly vapid euphemism for a crypto-Communist?”

Sam let out an incredulous puff of a laugh. “Socialists and Communists aren’t the same thing, lady. Not even close.”

“Your urbane incredulity does not stand in for proof, Mr. Diamonds!”

“Urbane? It’s literally just – here, let me get on Diffen and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.”

“That’s enough!” Karen announced. “Thank you, Mr. Diamonds, for your testimony.”

“No, seriously, I take this as a personal affront. I owe it to you and to myself to tell you–”

“Be silent, Mr. Diamonds! You’ve had your turn. Janet Scevola, have you–”

Janet made an unimpressed moue. “Nah.”

Karen shuffled her papers. “Miss Scevola. Are you now or have you ever been a member of any organization–”

“Not to my knowledge,” Janet sighed. “But my punk band in college was Peace Offensive.”

“Have you ever met any known communists?”

“Are you asking me to name names already?” Janet asked with a sneer. “You ain’t got nothing on me, do you?”

“Answer the question, Miss Scevola.”

“Yeah, I know a commie,” Janet said. “I know a couple.”

Karen picked up her pen, surprised but wary. “What are their names?”

“Pelznickel. Nick S. Claus. Chris Kringle. St. Nicholas. ”

“Couple of gingerbread men. The Krampus,” Elynor added.

“What? No, he’s a fascist.”

“We had drinks with him. He’s not a fascist.”

“Fascists can drink, too. They’ve got throats.”

“Not in my house they don’t. Anyway, he drank a pint of virgin blood. He’s got to be a commie.”

“There were Italian vampires. Not many, but some. They can be fascists. Anyone can be fascists.”

“I guarantee you the Krampus is not a fascist. He’s working for a communist, for God’s sake. He’s a bureaucrat.”

“Ohhh,” Janet said. “Right, yeah, right. Gotcha. It was the totalitarianism that was throwing me.”

“And the accent.”

“You gotta admit the accent really plays.”

“I hear ya.”

Karen whacked the podium. “The other defendants will be silent! Answer the question seriously, Miss Scevola.”

“I am! The fat man’s a godless commie. He’s got a manifesto in rhyme. Each according to their desserts, humbug.”

“That’s socialism,” Sam said. “Or according to their contribution anyway.”

“Man, I’m a 1930s neoliberal juggernaut, I’m not up on your peacenikky free-loving hippie horseshit.”

“It’s socialism, seriously.”

“You voted for Ralph Nader, you don’t get to have an opinion.”

“Miss Scevola,” Karen went on, “do you know a John Boylenger?”

Janet lifted her eyebrows. “I plead the Fifth Amendment.”

“Strictly speaking, we are not bound to constitutional law,” Karen smiled, “considering we have not taken any oath. Do you know a John Boylenger?”

“I plead the Fifth Amendment,” Janet insisted.

Karen picked up one of her papers. “Miss Scevola, can you identify this?”

“I plead the Fourth Amendment.”

Karen faltered. She looked at Beth and the others before turning again to Janet. “What.”

Janet popped an ankle up on the opposite knee. “This is illegal search and seizure. I plead my Fourth Amendment right.”

“Pfft,” Sam said. “I plead the 21st, then. What kind of McCarthy cavalcade doesn’t have a drink?”

“Miss Scevola, answer the–”

“I ask the questions here!” Janet roared.

Karen fell silent. So did the rest of the room. Karen stared at Janet very hard for a few moments.

“This is a print-out of your LinkedIn connections,” Karen said.

“You’ve been LinkedIn-stalking me?” Janet demanded. “That’s the least impressive kind of Internet stalking!”

“John Boylenger,” Karen insisted, “currently living in Malaysia, is a prominent Communist writer.”

“Oh come on!” Janet cried. “He’s on _LinkedIn_! Of course he’s not a real Communist!”

“Did you or did you not go to school with Mr. John Boylenger?”

“I plead–”

“Miss Scevola! Did you or did you not have a mathematics class with Mr. Boylenger?”

“I–”

Karen hammered her podium with her gavel. When she was done, the room was silent, and three angry faces glowered up at her.

“Thank you for your testimony, Miss Scevola,” Karen said, tucking her hair back behind her ears.

“Ma gavte la nata,” Janet grumbled.

Karen ignored it. She looked at Elynor. “Now then. Are you now, or have you ever been–”

“No,” Elynor snarled.

“No, what?” Karen replied.

“No,” Elynor said, and thought about it, and added, “bitch.”

“I think she means no, she’s not now nor has she ever been a member of the Communist Party,” Sam said.

“Nah,” Janet said, “I think she pretty much just meant ‘no, bitch.’”

Karen couldn’t throw down the mallet. You had to know how to handle difficult interviewees. You couldn’t let them see you get frustrated.

“Miss Pickman, are you now or have you ever been a member of any organization that is listed by the attorney general as subversive?”

Elynor stared at her, and then at the others.

“Miss Pickman!” Karen repeated.

“Who’s she talking to?” Elynor asked Janet.

Janet gave Elynor a flat look.

Karen’s lips tightened. “Miss Colqhoun, then.”

Elynor looked over her shoulder at Beth and nodded towards Karen. “I think she’s asking for you, baby.”

Beth scowled.

“YOU,” Karen snapped, pointing the gavel at Elynor. “Are you now–”

“Shouldn’t you have gotten something in the way of basic information, such as my name, before you hauled me into this pathetic spectacle?” Elynor asked. “That being, y’know, basic bitch-ass interrogation 101? Who’s even taking records of this?”

“Are you NOW OR HAVE YOU–”

“Fuck you!” Elynor shrieked, kicking and writhing in her chair. “Fuck you! I want my lawyer, and my Congressional representative, and your head speared on a pike! I’m not a witch! And you can’t try me like one!”

“Douglas,” Karen growled, “if you would.”

Bleeding hand wrapped up, Douglas used his good hand to deal Elynor a vicious blow across the face. Her head snapped around and she let out a sharp little bark of a sound, just in time for Doug to backhand her the other way.

Doug lifted his hand a third time, but Karen tapped the gavel. “Are you now or have you ever been a member of any organization that is listed by the attorney general as subversive?”

Elynor turned her head to face Karen and spat her own blood on the floor. “Ede faecam.”

Karen nodded to Doug, who slapped Elynor twice more.

“Stop it,” Sam said in a hard voice.

“Douglas,” Karen said sweetly. “Thank you. Miss Pickman? Are you ready to answer the question?”

“Yeah,” Elynor growled, twisting her hands where they were bound to the arms of her chair. She flicked both her middle fingers up. “I got your answer right here, bitch–”

Doug raised his hand again, but Karen shook her head. “Very well, Miss Pickman. We’ll arrange for you to spend some time thinking about what you’d like your answer to be.”

“Try and drown me, bitch,” Elynor replied. “I’ll have your salts to season my pets’ supper.”

Karen took a hard breath in through her nose. “Well then. In light of these unsettling discoveries, I feel there can be only one verdict. You are all guilty of associating with, if not in fact sympathizing with, Communists in America.”

“And Malaysia,” Beth added.

Karen glared at her. Poor Beth was going to wake up with her tires slashed.

“Great, fine,” Janet said. “Then can we go? Is this Shirley Jackson knock-off shitshow over?”

“Not quite,” Karen said. “The penalty for presenting such a danger to our community must be swift and severe.”

“You can’t blackmail us, y’know,” Janet said.

“You will all be hanged at sunrise.”

They all stared at Karen one more time.

“What?” Sam demanded. “You can’t just hang us. You’re gutless. You can only rough us up. That’s how the whole damn system works.”

“Then your bodies will be mulched in a woodchipper,” Karen added, “and used to feed the community vegetable garden.”

“Community vegetable–” Janet began to ask, in tones of utmost incredulity.

“Like fun you’ll mulch us!” Elynor exclaimed. “Nobody mulches my colleagues but me!”

“Douglas, Bethany, Peter,” Karen said, “if you’ll please take them to await their execution?”

“Oh, no,” Elynor said, “ha ha. Not today. Not a chance.”

“You can’t just kill us,” Janet insisted. “What’s David Brooks going to think? He hasn’t had a chance to analyze any of this, and–”

_“Per Adonai Eloim, Adonai Jehova, Adonai Sabaoth, Metraton On Agla Mathon–”_

Everyone stared at Elynor, who sat limp in her chair. Her eyes were closed and she was rocking her head a little as she spoke.

“Oh my God,” Janet said. “You’re fucking not.”

Elynor’s forefingers began to wiggle in her bindings, and she opened her eyes enough to cut Janet a sour look. _“–verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae, conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum–”_

“Enough,” Karen snapped, banging the gavel.

_“–daemonia Coeli God, Almonsin, Gibor, Jehosua, Evam, Zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.”_

Karen looked around, gesturing to Beth and Doug and trying to drive them towards Elynor. "I said, enough!”

Elynor’s head rolled back, her hands spreading out and legs beginning to tremble.

“Mannn,” Janet grumbled. “You are so shitty!”

Elynor groaned and her voice, which had been solidly settled in a slightly shrill alto, plummeted into a deep, hard tenor that echoed around the room from impossible depths. Hollow, hated, inhuman, she spoke in a voice too loud and too sonorous. The walls thundered.

“DIES MIES JESCHET–”

The floor began to bounce and shake. Doug, Beth, and the others began to look towards the doors, and Karen smacked the podium with her crab mallet.

“Stop!” Karen screamed.

“BOENEDOESEF DOUVEMA ENITEMAUS!”

“How are we even supposed to put him back?” Janet yelled.

“Kill her now!” Karen demanded. She knew she should’ve brought her gun.

 _“Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-hepl-ng’hkiai-YAH,”_ Elynor boomed, and her neck snapped completely back over her chair. She made a sickening noise, part yawn, part retch, and a thick tendril of something iridescent and gooey heaved out of her mouth. It bulged and pushed, waving wildly, and then her horrible twitching stopped all at once. The tendril waved and undulated peacefully out of Elynor’s mouth, and then her very nice black blouse grew strangely darker, bubbles rising up on the surface.

A foul and coarsely acrid smell, like harshest burnt ozone and rotten meat, filled the room. Something inside Elynor began to rumble like a living earthquake.

The bubbles, slicked red and gleaming like beetle shells under the flat fluorescent lights, heaped on Elynor’s chest. They rose, congealed, and then ripped open her bindings, clothing, and chest, gurgling out in a wet gush in her lap and then crushing both body and chair under their weight. The tendril roared back into her mouth and reappeared when it shot out from the pile of bubbles, seizing Doug by the throat and holding tight.

Doug didn’t get a chance to scream. His hair went stark white, skin sloughing off in a wet, rippling flood. His muscles began to shrivel and blacken, as if touched by acid, His clothes fell away in tatters, suddenly moth-eaten and too fragile to bear contact with the crinkling raw muscles, and then the bubbles let him go.

Six more arms soon appeared, whipping through the sterile community center air.

That was the last thing Karen knew.*

* * *

 

“So,” Sam mused as they watched the conglomeration of red-washed bubbles whip the oozing body of their former captor through the air. “That’s Yog, is it?”

“One can only hope so. If it’s not, then we’re tending firmly North on a fecal tributary without a whipping instrument,” the Trashmagician replied, wiggling in her bindings. From the way she managed to pick at knots of rope with her hands tied, it seemed to him that this wasn’t the first time she was bound in iron shackles. It probably wouldn’t be the last, either. “I think she bailed on us. I don’t see her spirit anywhere around.”

“Damn. Flaky broads. Well, in the absence of the professional, you got any idea how to put this guy down?”

“No. I like the current configuration of my immortal soul, thanks, so I generally try to stay well-away from Yog and these kinds of disspiriting adventures.”

Sam stretched a meditative hamstring, thinking about that. With the Necromancer dead, he did suppose the Trashmagician had to pun enough for two.

“I’m almost loose,” the Trashmagician said. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be a talker. Get him on your side.”

Sam looked over at the raging amorphous thing. “Hey. S’cuse me. Sir?”

Yog threw their former interrogator into a wall and vented a yowl that made no noise but rattled Sam’s teeth in his head and cracked the linoleum tiles.

Sam hissed. “Hey, big guy. Fella. They call you Yog, right?”

The yowl stopped echoing and the conglomerate globes shifted slightly. It wasn’t clear that that constituted turning to face Sam and the Trashmagician, but Sam chose to see it as roughly equivalent.

“Yeah. You. Looks like you got the advantage, buddy. I don’t think we’ve been introduced. We’re what you might call colleagues of that sack of bones you stepped out of.”

Yog shifted again. His iridescent surface shimmered. Sam watched the shimmer carefully and then nodded.

“Yeah. So, uh. I guess you’re her boss, huh? Or a chunk of him, anyway. You get any of her consciousness?”

Yog shimmered in a slightly different way. Sam nodded again.

“Yeah, I getcha. You’re conterminous, aren’t you? I mean, when people say they’ve seen some shit, you’re probably sitting there giggling into your sleeve, right?”

Yog gleamed.

“Right. I figured. So listen, buddy, I think you must’ve seen that these were fairly hairy circumstances. We don’t traditionally like to get mixed up with McCarpathians in this kind of way, but on the grounds that political assassination was imminent I gotta say I think your representative there did a pretty good job. I’d call myself a fan. So, y’know, that’s whatever, if it comes up in her performance appraisal.”

“Oh my God,” the Trashmagician grumbled. “I’ll pare your Adonai good, you–”

Sam used his meditative hamstring to kick her. Yog was glistening and swaying a little.

“Anyway,” Sam went on. “I get that you’re probably a busy guy, and I don’t want to keep you here longer than you gotta be.”

Yog bubbled a little and did a bit of a bounce.

“You’ve got to release him,” the Trashmagician mumbled. “I think he’s stuck here, otherwise.”

“And you don’t know the words, do you.”

“I haven’t suddenly studied centuries of Yog-Sothothery in the past forty-five seconds, no.”

Sam cleared his throat and address Yog again. “I, uh, I gotta admit I’m not sure how to help you get back to whatever you were doing. Can we call you a taxi or something? Gratis, obviously, and we really, really appreciate it. You came in clutch, brother, I don’t mind telling you.”

It turned out that Yog was pretty dexterous with those ropey arms of his, and when he slimed them in blood and liquified skin he could use them to write on the wall. It gave both humans a headache, trying to read the words precisely, but after a few minutes they pretty much had it down.

“Is that a shnaaa, or?” Sam asked, squinting.

Yog tapped the word firmly.

“No,” the Trashmagician said. “It’s… like, y’know, shnya.”

“What?”

“Shnya!”

“Oh. Yeah. Capiche.” Sam closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it. “You ready, Yog?”

Yog rippled a little.

Carefully, haltingly, Sam ground out, “Ai h’kai ngh-l’peh Yog Sothoth shnya aiy zhro.”

It was the clunkiest release that had probably ever been heard by this particular Outer Thing, but Yog presently fazed out of their plane with a sound like falling mist. The stench lingered, but the iridescence faded from the bubbles, which began popping, one by one and then all together.

In seconds, they were left along with the mutilated bodies of the McCarthyites and the Necromancer’s gutted corpse.

“That could’ve gone a lot worse,” the Trashmagician said, sounding a little surprised. She twitched the rope knot one more time and wriggled vigorously, and in a few seconds she had the ropes loose enough that she could pull her shackled arms away from the back of the chair and stand up. “How you doing over there?”

Sam shifted in his tight bindings and tugged against his handcuffs. Stainless steel. There was a double standard there somewhere. “I was a little busy schmoozing. You wanna turn me loose?”

The Trashmagician came over, examined the knot, and turned her back so her bound hands could start picking at it. “We’re going to have to drive away. My phone’s dead.”

“I know my way around a sketchy white van or two.”

“Good. Because if that thing’s a manual, I’m going to need help. The hacksaw’s at home.”

* * *

 

Between them, they managed to drag the Necromancer’s gutted body to the parking lot. She was still entangled in her ropes, which made the dragging process easier, but she was still heavy enough that it was its own little task to try and get her into the van at all.

They drove in second gear all the way home. The Trashmagician managed to work the pedals with her feet and steer with her chin, but she needed Sam to work the gear shift. Sam, twisted in his seat and shifting blind, was not proficient in the task.

When they got back to the house, Sam babysat the van while the Trashmagician went to find a hacksaw. There was a lot of clattering from within the house and presently she reappeared with the tool. After a little dedicated sawing and some post-imperilment grousing, they could both pull their hands forward and stretch.

Sam rolled his neck. “So, see you at happy hour?”

The Trashmagician pffted. “Not a chance, pinko. Let’s get Nec inside. You’ve got to help me raise her.”

“I already put an Outer Thing to bed. I’m not going to futz around putting her back together. What about the configuration of my immortal soul?”

“Don’t be a baby. It’ll probably just mean sticking one of her fingers in a light socket or something. C’mon.”

They carried the Necromancer’s body into the living room, even though they were both sure their arms were going to fall off, and the Trashmagician booted up her computer.

She opened Skype and made a call.

“–pheus? The White Eſs is ſcreaming! Attend to it, won’t ye?”

“Hutch?” the Trashmagician asked. “That you?”

A young man appeared on the screen. His quizzical face broke into a smile. “Oh! Why, Janet, my summer bloſsom! How nice to ſee you. What’s the occaſion?”

“Gotta ask you boys a thing about a dead.”

“Excellent. Our area of expertiſe. I aſsume you want help making ſomeone leſs dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Splendid! Neſs always knew you’d come around. Where is ſhe? I’ll get the others.” Hutch wandered away from the screen and Sam could hear some yelling in more of that strange, unplaceable accent. There was the noise of clattering steps and then a middle-aged and elderly man both appeared.

“Janet!” they said in happy unison. The elderly man began, “You look radia–”

“Hi, Joe, hi, Simon,” the Trashmagician said. “Let’s skip the raptures, yeah? Sorry, but we’ve got an emergency. Got to ask about, uh. This.”

The Trashmagician picked up her computer and aimed it at the Necromancer’s lifeless body.

The men on the Skype call were silent. Eventually someone let out a low whistle.

“Have you tried turning her on and offe?” Simon asked, and a boisterous roar of laughter echoed out of the speakers.

The Trashmagician rolled her eyes and put the laptop back on the coffee table.

“Woof,” Joe said. “What’d ſhe do to herſelf?”

“McCarthyites were threatening to kill us,” the Trashmagician said. “She was already pretty mad, ſo ſhe barfed up a little Yog and killed them.”

Hutch shook his head and sighed. “Claſsic Neſs.”

“How ſhould we go about putting her back together?” the Trashmagician asked.

“Hmm,” Joe said. “Did Neſs leave herſelf proviſions?”

“Such as?”

“There’d be a refrigerator full of innards,” Joe replied. “Looks like ſhe’ll want the full ſuite, ‘phagus to large inteſtine.”

The Trashmagician wrinkled her nose. “We defy Augury.”

“Yeah, but it’s the beſt bet. If ſhe did what you ſay, there’s bits of her ſmeared wherever ſhe ſummoned Yogge-Sothothe. T’is no good burning her nowe and raiſing her from ſaltes. She’ll be incomplete, and thereby piſsed.”

“Great. Okay. So we’ll look in the baſement for guts. She’s got a Grey’s Anatomy down there, right?”

“And Galen,” Simon nodded.

“Aweſome,” the Trashmagician grumbled. “What elſe do we need?”

“Any ſerums or notes would be good,” Hutch said. “Neſs was always big on diverſifying her portfolio. Who do we know? Notte the Swiſs, the uſeleſs twat…”

“She converſed with a chymiſt with ſome good ideas back in the 20s. See if you can find anything from Weſt in her filing cabinet.”

“Oh hell no,” the Trashmagician said. “I’m not going near the cabinet. The memoirs ate a racoon once.”

“It juſt needs a little bloode every nowe and againe,” Joe said. “She’s probably fed it ſince then. Don’t be a babye.”

“Fine. What about her ſpirit?”

“You don’t have it with you?”

“I wouldn’t be calling you boys at this hour if I had her here.”

“True. Huh. Well, it’s hard to remember where one goes when one’s notte here,” Simon said. “But if I had to guess, ſhe’s probably gone beyond the Ultimate Gate. Maybe we ſhould call a dreamer.”

“Nah,” Joe said. “Neſs knows where ſhe is. You don’t live in one form ſo long without getting attached. Wake her body and ſhe’ll find it quick enough.”

“But if ſhe doeſn’t find it,” Hutch said, “just locke her body up ſomewhere it can’t hurt itself and we’ll handle it in the morninge.”

“Okay,” the Trashmagician said slowly. “I guess we’ll try it tonight. I’ll text you if anything goes pear-ſhaped.”

“Oh! And there’s juſt one other thing, dear,” Hutch said.

“Yeah? What’s that,” the Trashmagician asked.

“If he comes calling, doe notte open the door for the Black Man,” Joe said. The other men nodded.

The Trashmagician stared them all down.

“That’s raciſt,” she said coldly.

“No, no,” Simon said quickly.

“Well, yes,” Joe admitted in an undertone.

“No,” Simon insisted. "THE Black Man. Joſephus is talking about Nyarlathotep. If he comes, doe notte open the door. He will want to employ Neſs again, and ſhe will be ſevered from Yog for a goodly period if he gets at her.“

"Again?”

“T'is not uncommon for to have a bumpy ſtart in the beginning of this particular career,” Joe said. "We all make miſtakes.“

"So, what. You went to work for a competitor, and when you got out of Nyarlathotep’s biz you ſtuck with Yog?”

"The benefits are muche better,” Hutch shrugged.

“And now they bid on you?”

“They might. It happens,” Joe said firmly. “Goode help is hard to find.”

“I don’t think there’s any ſituation or any definition of the word under which you guys would be conſidered ‘help.’ But I gueſs it muſt be nice to feel you’ve got a little leverage in contract negotiations.”

“We can notte talk about it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ve gotte to be careful. Moſt perſonnel ſhake-ups happen in times of peril or diſcorporealization,” Joe said.

“He nearly got me, once,” Hutchinson grumbled. "After Mary caught me a ſwipe, I had to chaſe Him and ſome forty witches off my propertie with a broom in 1690. Juſt don’t open the door.“

The Trashmagician scoffed. "She’s had Yog in her bubble bath before. I’d ſay ſhe’s pretty loyal. I really don’t think Nyarlathotep is going to come and try to–”

A deep, plummy ding-dong resonated through the foyer and crept on into the living room, clinging to the walls. Sam was suddenly pretty glad for those obfuscating sheers on the windows.

The Trashmagician paused and looked at Sam. Sam looked at the Trashmagician. The necromancers looked at them both.

“Okay, I take your point,” the Trashmagician said. "No anſwering doors.“

"You don’t even have a doorbell,” Sam complained.

The men stopped and stared.

“Who is that?” Simon asked.

“That’s Sam. He’s a guy,” the Trashmagician said. She turned the computer screen so Sam was captured in the video.

“Does he knowe a thinge?”

“Nah. Only a little. He’s the one who called Yog a cab.”

The men on the screen gave them three eerily similar side-eyes.

“Let us knowe how it goes,” Simon said slowly. “If it woulde help, we can come over and take a look after Brunche tomorrowe.”

“Cool. Thanks, guys.”

Sam cleared his throat and leaned over into view of the screen. "Hey, before you go, I gotta ask: do people ever ask about the accent?“

"Oh, yes,” Simon nodded. "All the time.“

"We juſt tell them we’re from Cleveland,” Hutch said.

“Bye, guys.” The Trashmagician closed her laptop and rolled her back, shaking out her neck. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“I flunked first-aid,” Sam said.

“Cool,” the Trashmagician said, stretching her rotator cuffs and making a gruesome face. “I gueſs that makes you head nurſe.”

“Ugh.”

“There’s ſhakſhouka in it for you, if you help me put her back together.”

Sam thought about that for a second. “Okay. But I’ve got an appointment at ten a.m.”

“Oh, this’ll take two minutes. She’ll probably want to pull ſtuff out and move things around once ſhe’s up and about, anyway. As long as we get the eſsentials in, ſhe can figure the rest out for herſelf.”

“How long does the accent take to wear off?”

“Just got to liſten to ſome Mid-Atlantic accents. We’ll put on a podcast or ſomething.”

They boosted the Necromancer down the steps into Dol Guldur. The Trashmagician cleared the bar and hauled the Necromancer on top of it while Sam went in quest of organs. Most of the doors in the hallway were locked, but in one of the unlocked studies he found a refrigerator full of bottled and jarred miscellany.

“I’m thinking basics, yeah?” he suggested.

“Right. Just the essentials. I don’t think she bothers to use her spleen much, let alone an appendix or a uterus.”

“Yeah, I feel like that wouldn’t keep well.”

“What’s in the half-gallon jar?”

Sam cracked the lid on a big jar of shining pearlescent goop and took a whiff. “PHWOAR. Yog.”

“She’s got him stashed everywhere! Although I guess this is more manageable than a bathtub full.”

“In or out?”

“Bring it over. That’s got to be as good as stem cells, as far as age-defying goo can be concerned. I didn’t want to have to try and do a skin graft anyway.”

Sam brought the goo, a heart, and a stomach over. As he gathered the rest of it, the Trashmagician popped upstairs for a pair of catfish noodling gloves and came back into the basement to look in the filing cabinet.

“Waite, Washington, Weeden, Whateley, Wilson – overshot it. Weeden…ick, he came to a sticky end. Here we go. West.”

It took a bit of ransacking the DMZ cabinets and a futile search through the attic for a double boiler, but presently the Trashmagician came back into the basement with the results of the recipe tacked to the West folder. Sam swept up his solitaire game and stuffed it back in his pocket, giving the spritz bottle full of glowing green fluid in the Trashmagician’s hand a baleful look.

“Put your gloves on,” the Trashmagician said.

They tucked a pair of lungs, a heart, a stomach, a liver, two kidneys, and a large and small intestine into the Necromancer’s body. It was tricky to get it all in, even with as much as they were leaving out, but presently they got things settled in spots that probably wouldn’t instantly kill her. They smeared a little Yog over the gaping abdominal cavity and stood back.

The Trashmagician shot five gusts of greenish mist at the body. The organs lurched nastily into motion and the Yog began to solidify like an raw egg frying in a pan, smoothing white and pitless over the cavity. The Trashmagician moved up a little along the table and stuck the nozzle in the Necromancer’s left nostril, spraying the green stuff up the Necromancer’s nose.

The Necromancer shot up, knocking the bottle loose and nearly headbutting the Trashmagician. She looked around with a wild, unthinking expression, a vapid animal look in her eyes as she panted for breath. But after a moment or two, she sat up straighter, blinked, and let out a loud titter of fiendish delight as she recognized her surroundings.

“Suck on that, Karen!” the Necromancer laughed.

The Trashmagician slapped her in the back of the head. “You dink!”

“Hey! I’m the dink that saved your lives,” the Necromancer said, primly swinging her legs over the bar and holding the tatters of her blouse over her chest. Sam handed her a tea towel and she tied it like a halter top. “You’re welcome.”

“You left us with Yog to deal with!”

“And you did a fine job. Was it good? Should I be sorry I missed it?”

“How do you feel about oozy corpses?” Sam asked.

“I always miss the fun stuff,” the Necromancer sighed. She carefully hopped to her feet.

“That was a total dick move, dude. Don’t leave people with an Outer Thing. What’s wrong with you?”

“It was a character-building experience.” The Necromancer rubbed at her nose. “You give me a reverse Egyptian nosejob?”

“Yeah.”

“Nicely done.” The Necromancer reached for the spray bottle. “Let me have another hit of that.”

The Trashmagician held it away. “No. The last thing you need to do is get all hopped up on reanimator goo.”

“I need it. I don’t have a healing factor. And you guys definitely didn’t give me a blood transfusion, did you? Sam, could you be a doll and grab a bag out of the fridge where you found these?”

“What type?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You’re an AB?”

“I will be, if you get me a bag of AB. It really doesn’t matter. Anything will do.”

Sam left and returned with the bag of blood. The Necromancer had found a dressing gown and was pulling it on, and the Trashmagician was still grumbling.

“I was promised fhakfhouka,” Sam said. “I’m not leaving until I get it.”

“Ooh,” the Necromancer cooed, rooting around in the bar drawer. She came up with a line of medical tubing and a needle and took the bag from Sam. “That sounds good. It’s almost time for brunch, anyway.”

“It’s three a.m.,” the Trashmagician said.

“We’ll make coffee,” the Necromancer shrugged. “Meeting with Azathoth makes me hungry.”

“Azathoth? The lads said something about you going beyond the Ultimate Gate.”

“Oh, no. Not this time. Azathoth. You know. Seething nuclear chaos.”

“I thought that was the Bikini Atoll.”

“It is. He likes Micronesia.”

“Great. You get to go to the tropics and we get gooey McCarthyites and Outer Things. How’s that for fair?”

“It wasn’t all fun and games,” the Necromancer said, attaching the tube to the blood bag and squirting a little blood into the bar sink. She stuck the needle in the crook of her arm and held the bag aloft, heading for the stairs. “I think I got a mosquito bite on my soul.”

The Trashmagician contemplated that for a second. “That does make me feel a little better, actually. How do you even itch that?”

“My question precisely. By the way, Sam, Yog wanted me to tell you that if you’re ever looking for a steady job–”

“Yeah, well, you tell him that if he ever needs help finding something or someone,” Sam said, digging around in his pockets for a smoke, “I’ll take his call. But that’s about it.”

“I’ll give him your card.”

“Sons of bitches,” the Trashmagician grumbled as they reached the ground floor. “Ready to kill us for communism and mulch us for a community garden. I ask you.”

“No trace of cognitive dissonance,” the Necromancer said. “Well, vigilantes are like that.”

“Look on the bright side. No one can say we died of metaphor,” Sam shrugged, and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

* * *

 

*At least for now. When Karen next opened her eyes, she was locked in a basement, thirty years had passed, and everything was grinding, horrific pain.

But that was for later.


	11. Vic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Modern Promethei

“We’re going to be having a house guest for a little while,” the Necromancer said, arms crossed on the floor beside the attic hatch door.

The Trashmagician very carefully put down the alembic full of yogurt and glanced over. “Oh ya?”

“Yeah. Gonna put him in the living room.”

“Cool. I’m glad Orne and Curwen finally kicked Hutch out.”

“They haven’t yet. They’re working on it. Sort of. Hutch bought a place.”

“Oh. That’s nice. So who is coming over to stay, then? Anyone I know?”

“Maybe.” The Necromancer thumbed at the edge of the hatch. “Read a lot of Romantics?”

“I will not stay in the same house as Lord Byron,” the Trashmagician said, eyes wide. “I don’t care, I’ll start packing now.”

“No, no,” the Necromancer said, wrinkling her nose. “Gross. Ew. I’d have to hose him off before he stood on the steps. No, it’s just a nice young guy I used to correspond with.”

“Nice. That totally doesn’t leave me wanting for any details whatsoever.”

The Necromancer made an eesh face. “You’re going to be weird about this. I should’ve known you’d be weird about this.”

“I’m only weird if there’s something to be weird about. Should I be weird about this? What’s there to be weird about?”

“Well, you like alchemists, right?”

“Depends.”

“Of course.” The Necromancer rolled her neck. “I’m reanimating Vic Frankenstein.”

“No!” the Trashmagician cried. “No, you can’t. He’s so sad! You can’t reanimate him when he is SO SAD, and then also torture him!”

“I’m not going to torture him.”

“Why else would you reanimate him?”

“I’m not going to torture him! I just told you, I’m putting him in the living room, not the basement. I folded a blanket for him and everything. Bought a hypoallergenic pillow.”

The Trashmagician squinted. This sounded way too good to be true. “Why do you want him alive, if you’re not going to torture him for stuff?”

“I feel like I should get credit for not having tortured anyone for 330-some years,” the Necromancer groused. “One youthful indiscretion in the summer of ‘64 and suddenly I’m a crazed sadist who chains people up in basements.”

“You do chain people up in basements. You built special rooms in your scary death basement to hold all the chains,” the Trashmagician replied.

“It’s for the safety of my patients only. And to not get bopped by a Pharaoh.”

“And you aren’t exactly appalled by the suffering of others.”

“It is not my fault that pain is hilarious.”

“And – ”

“You’re totally missing the point,” the Necromancer cried. “I’m extending a professional courtesy. Vic gotta live.”

“Vic don’t gotta live. He is the saddest person ever. Why do you want to bring him back to this mortal vale of tears when he’s only going to be more sad than ever?”

“He died real sad at 26,” the Necromancer replied. “That’s too sad. It’s the saddest. And he’ll stay forever sad and dead if I don’t bring him back and let him scoot around a little, enjoying indoor plumbing and the Geneva Convention. Imagine how happy he’ll be!”

“This still feels fishy. What are you getting out of this.”

“Helping a chum.”

The Trashmagician squinted even harder.

“It’s professional courtesy,” the Necromancer insisted. “People do it all the time. You outlive somebody in this business and if it turns out that things don’t suck too much after their death, you’ve got a professional obligation to offer them the chance to get in on it. At least he’ll know what’s happened. Lot of people don’t know you can do this.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“He probably likes being dead. He lived real, real hard.”

“Now that’s bullshit,” the Necromancer declared. “No one likes being dead. No one. Being dead sucks and is awful. You’re bored, and you’re cold, and it’s real dark, and nothing is good. There’s no hors d'oeuvres in death. Not one.”

The Trashmagician frowned. “That’s not necessarily a rule for everyone. You’ve only ever died, yourself, not as anyone else. How do you know that you aren’t just going to hell when you die?”

“First off, rude. Second, how would anyone know? How do you know you’re not in hell right now?”

“I can’t be in hell. There’s hors d'oeuvres.”

“You’ve been dead. You know being dead isn’t nice.”

“I don’t remember it all the well. It all happened so fast.”

“Death is bad. You don’t get to do things when you’re dead. People don’t like being dead. They just sometimes like being alive less.”

“Hard to argue with that. It’s too dumb.”

“Whatever. Vic Frankenstein’s crashing on my couch for a while so he can be less sad and miserable and maybe finish his goddamn undergrad degree.”

The Trashmagician pointed at her. “That’s a worthy reason to reanimate someone. Let the poor guy finish his undergrad degree.”

The Necromancer nodded and patted the floor with the palms of her hands. “Cool. Cool cool cool. Right. Tonight. Now, even. Don’t come down for a while, until I give you the all-clear. He’s gonna be kind of spooked, I think.”

“Well, who wouldn’t be.”

“Exactly. A’ight. Later.”

“Wait,” the Trashmagician said. An ugly dawn was breaking upon her and she was helpless to ignore it. “So Mary Shelley wrote true crime?”

“Yeah. Walton really was that useless.”

“Wow.” That was impressive, in its way. “But, uh. If this was true crime–”

“Anyway I’m going to go reanimate him,” the Necromancer said, descending through the hatch. “Catch you on the flip side.”

The Trashmagician hurried over. “But what about the monster?”

“It burnt itself at the North Pole!” the Necromancer called from the second floor. “Can’t you read?”

“You don’t actually believe that!” the Trashmagician snapped, clattering after her in pursuit. “The monster was a lying, manipulative douchebag! Why should we expect that he burnt himself? Walton just let him wander off.”

The Necromancer huffed, hustling for the main stairs. “I have a few kooky theories, but there’s nothing to suggest that he didn’t self-immolate at the North Pole.”

“Except for common fucking sense!”

“And even if he didn’t, there’s no reason to expect that the monster would know that I’ve got Vic, now would he? I imagine that my network would be quicker to let me know about some eight-foot-tall fatless creep asking impertinent questions about me than they would be to tell said creep that I, a reanimatrix of renown, have got a dead guy in my basement.”

“Okay. Assuming this is true. What’s the kooky theory?”

The Necromancer stopped in the doorway of Dol Guldur. “Um.”

“C’mon.”

“Ever hear of Bigfoot?”

The Trashmagician gave her an unhappy stare. The Necromancer flashed a broad, insincere smile and shut the door in her face.

* * *

 

Four hours later, the Trashmagician popped into the kitchen in the DMZ. Sam had left knishes in the fridge two days ago, and they should be at peak edibility.

An emaciated young man with dark circles under his eyes and stringy, dirty-grey hair sat at the kitchen table, wrapped up in a heavy down blanket. There was a teacup full of steaming water placed in front of him. The Necromancer was slicing a banana up into a bowl of yogurt.

“Oh, good,” the Necromancer said. “Vic, dear, this is the Trashmagician. She lives upstairs.”

Vic rattled a little and shivered.

“Oh, dude,” the Trashmagician winced.

“Eat this,” the Necromancer said, pushing the bowl towards Vic. “It’ll help you keep the blood down. One sec.”

She beckoned the Trashmagician out into the hall. “Do you know any nutritionists? Ideally ones that don’t indulge in sass-back.”

“No.”

“Dang. I’ve never raised a starvation victim before. He’s malnourished, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I thought there was something about him. He had that air to him. Honestly, I thought it was just because he’s European.”

“He’s got his shots, so that’s all to the good. But I’m going to have to give him a bath,” the Necromancer admitted. “He’s not stoked about that.”

“Get one of the boys to do it.”

“They won’t. Simon might. Joe won’t. And Hutch is just being a bitch about all this. He never liked Vic. I think they met at a thing once and it just didn’t go well.”

“What’s Hutch’s damage?”

“I believe he’s of the opinion that Vic’s kind of a limp-wristed hand-wringer,” the Necromancer said. “I guess he does agonize over stuff, but c’mon. Vic climbs mountains. That’s super butch!”

“Yeah.”

“Still. You know Hutch, and if he gets Joe on his side you can forget about reasoning with him.”

“Huh. Well. Fuck them, then. Kid needs a bath, no two ways about it.”

“Yeah. Find me a nutritionist?”

“See what I can do.”

“Ehn?” called a reedy little voice from the kitchen. “Ehn?”

“Comin’,” the Necromancer said. She trotted into the kitchen. The Trashmagician went after her.

Vic let out a plaintive sound that shuffled the Trashmagician’s brains around for a second or two, until she managed to dig through the layered accents and hear, “I would really like some breeches.”

“I’ve got some shorts, but I think they’ll be too big on you.”

Vic wrinkled his nose. He said another thing. It turned out to be “What about a coat? Anything like that? Not those.” He gestured to the Trashmagician’s jean-clad gams.

“Rude,” the Trashmagician grumbled.

“Vic, you’re weak as an undead kitten,” the Necromancer said soothingly. “Eat your probiotic formula and have a bath, and we’ll talk about clothes on the other side of that.”

Vic frowned severely. He looked sadly at the Trashmagician and she balked a little. So that’s what a pair of lustrous eyes looked like. She’d just thought Walton was being weird.

“Did Walton handle it?” Vic asked.

The Trashmagician winced again.

The Necromancer pushed the bowl over to Vic. “Eat. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to feed you and make airplane noises, and you won’t even get the reference.”

The Trashmagician seized her knish and dipped out.

* * *

 

Once he was bathed and shorn of his horrible scraggly beard, Vic had been plopped into a suit of the Trashmagician’s old reenactor clothes, tied onto him with the judicious use of neckties until someone could get at him with the sewing machine. The Necromancer had spent some years building up his library again, and when he was strong enough to stay conscious for three hours together, she revealed to him the lavish present with a decent amount of fanfare. Vic seemed appreciative, but rather wary – of books and of the world in general.

“Everything’s very loud,” he said. “And the clothes are awful.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

But Vic’s face said he would not.

The first few sirens were really bad and they had to brew up a batch of shrub because he couldn’t be happy without a vat of it in the house. That was all right, though. The Trashmagician had been into recipe redaction for ages and it was nice to work with someone who had such a clear memory of what stuff should taste like. The Necromancer was useless when it came to that kind of thing.

“More spices,” Vic said of the Mughlai curry.

“Yeah?”

“More. Definitely more.” Vic squinted at the bottle of cayenne and poured a little out in his hand. He sniffed it and took a lick. “This. More. Why is it so tiny? Who has tiny spices?”

They took him to the Whole Foods and let him frolic around the bulk spices. It was a nice outing, until he saw a pair of cargo shorts and had to go lie down.

The lads were hospitable enough. The Necromancer boxed Hutch’s ears pre- and post-dinner, so they all sat down to cocktails like old friends. Vic picked up the long ess like a native, which he really was, but when the conversation slipped into ever more drunken Latin, he started ordering water.

“Those men are not okay,” Vic later grumbled, as he and the Trashmagician walked home. The Necromancer was off on a carouse. “N is okay. But those three are all wrong. Mr. Hutchinson doesn’t look the same as he did when I met him.”

“Yeah. There’s a story there. It’s short, but it’s also boring. Do you really call her N? Did she really sign her letters to you as ‘the Necromancer’?”

“Yes. How did she sign her letters to you?”

The Necromancer tried to impress upon Vic the necessity of trousers. He proved immovable, and when the Trashmagician took advantage of the opportunity to go about the place in a pair of culottes, the Necromancer took it as a personal insult.

Vic didn’t like professional basketball. He leapt nearly out of his skin when he came unexpectedly upon one of the Necromancer’s fur coats in a closet. Sometimes he screamed himself out of a nightmare.

It was probably a little too soon to show him the Frankenstein movies, but they were optimistic. It might prove good for him, if he could learn to laugh at it all.

“So,” the Trashmagician said one night, while she and the Necromancer stood on the front porch. The Necromancer had been bagging up a dead cat that had been left on their doorstep. The Trashmagician watched her scoop up all the scattered bits. “About this monster.”

The Necromancer darted a look at the living room and crushed her cigarette in the ashtray, blowing out a stream of silver smoke. “Yeah. ‘Bout that.”

“Gotta go get his corpse and show Vic. And if he’s alive, we gotta kill him.”

“No reason to expect he didn’t kill himself.”

“Bro.”

The Necromancer held up both hands, warding off the outrage. “All right, all right. Gotta kill a monster.”

“How’re we going to find him?” the Trashmagician said. “Whole tracts of American fiction testify to the human inability to catch Bigfoot.”

“Maybe we just need a bigger net.”

“We’re definitely going to need something high-caliber. Slippery motherfucker, I guess, but more to the point he’s big.”

“Eight feet, yeah.”

“Jeez. Props to Vic for leaping on him and trying to fist-fight him, then. He barely comes up to your jaw.”

“Only when I’m wearing shoes.” The Necromancer leaned back against one of the porch posts. “I’ll ask around and see if anybody caught sight of an eight-foot thing haunting Kamchatka. I found out about Vic pretty quick after the unfortunateness, but there was still about five years there where nobody knew where he was. If the monster had been keeping any kind of eye on the grave, that would be a place to start.”

“For what? Leaving clues? Anything on a trail that cold will let him know we’re looking for him. He could just bolt.”

“Yeah, obviously. But we might as well have a rough idea of where he is and what technology he has access to. And if he’s still hung up on Vic.”

“How could he not be?”

“Two hundred some years is a long time.”

“The leopard cannot change its socks. I can’t believe you weren’t keeping a closer eye on this. Who knows what that fucktruck’s been getting up to.”

The Necromancer rolled her eyes. “I have to live my life! Let me work, woman.”

The Trashmagician blew out her lips but let it go. “Technology, though? Really?”

“If he doesn’t have a digital presence, it’s because he’s living in a cave,” the Necromancer said. “It’s vital in this century. And you have to stay fresh. Simon had to leave Prague this time because people started to get his smell. He went to get a phone and asked for a Motorola RAZR.”

“Oh, man! Are you kidding me? That’s 101!”

“You could’ve heard a pin drop. Cultural shit you can explain away with having hippie parents, but current technology’s a dead giveaway. We’ll have to get Vic online in a few weeks, too. You can always pick out the weirdos because they won’t adapt.”

“Social media Darwinism.”

“Exactly.”

The Trashmagician killed a mosquito and hummed. “Maybe that’s a good tiger pit, then. Let’s put Vic on facebook.”

The Necromancer thought about that for a second. “Well, it’s still identity fraud, even if the victim doesn’t know the internet exists.”

“Nah. It’s roleplaying. He’s a fictional character, isn’t he? And if the monster is floating around on the internet, all we have to do is go to some chat rooms for the movies and pick a fight and see who’s taking it way too seriously.”

“Oh.” The Necromancer nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh, we should probably start by talking about how the monster was made. That’s a good way in. Only Vic would really know the details. If the monster’s reading, it’ll set off alarms for him.”

The Trashmagician sat up straighter, eyes agleam. “Then we’re going to need a screed.”

The Necromancer snorted. “Yeah, that’s your wheelhouse, duder. I gotta make an Instagram.”

It took about two months of serious sneaking around, but FictorVrankenstein had had a rich, fulfilling digital career. The Necromancer was known to be an artist with a selfie-stick and the Trashmagician burnt the midnight oil writing some irate discourses on Frankenstein-related pop culture and then tweaked them into the spelling and turns of phrase she had picked up from Vic. (He was learning more and more every day. Last Tuesday he had experimented with variations on “homeslice.” She was scrambling to preserve his dialect before it vanished.)

It started innocently enough, on IMDB and Goodreads, but as they shook the branches of the horror fan tree they found themselves backsliding with appalling alacrity into a tumblr morass.

A careful posting and reblog schedule combined with the strategic use of flamewars and public arguments let them rack up followers in pretty short order. Some of the names were quite normal, and some plunged the Trashmagician into such a severe case of second-hand embarrassment she often had to go lie down – not least of all when a girl bearing a more than superficial resemblance to the witch began following the blogs. The Necromancer was not so susceptible to the humiliating horrors of an emo lifestyle and could carry on while the Trashmagician collected herself.

The LinkedIn page was the merest cardboard prop but the Twitter account got a little more traction. The OKCupid page was a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and it was only with an eye to the high probability of Vic’s future miserable embarrassment that they restrained themselves from making a Grindr profile. Besides, their bait was beginning to draw fish, and they didn’t want to be too incautious. Sexting with monsters, even in the interests of righteous deception, would set them back on a psychological scale that would be impossible to hide from Vic.

“This one,” the Trashmagician said, peering at an interesting page. They were eight weeks in. “What’s he up to?”

They had a host of aggressive anons, but a few with usernames liked everything on the blog. They shelled out the extra dosh to be able to track users who found them through tumblr and vice versa. They had hundreds of possibilities, but only a handful of credible concerns.

“Gotta doxx him, I guess,” the Necromancer said. “Should I put on some techno and get you a pair of mirrored sunglasses?”

“Couldn’t hurt. Better put a sheet over the scanner, while you’re at it. They could try and fax us a virus.”

The Trashmagician combed through the candidates, puts anyone she couldn’t scare up information on in a special pile and focusing on them. How easily could an eight-foot-tall fatless creepazoid avoid a paper trail? Then again, the Pacific Northwest did pride itself on weirdness. Perhaps they also took pride in selling cell phones to shaved sasquatches.

She poked and prodded her options, and at last found the answer staring her right in the face. She traced the information back to a tumblr user who had liked each and every one of “Vic’s” posts, checked out his LinkedIn, and even opened an OKCupid account.

He had a picture of Le génie du mal for an icon. His username xxxLuc1f3rxxx.

The Trashmagician shuddered artificially. She clicked over to xxxLuc1f3rxxx’s Facebook page and felt her blood run cold.

“Shit!” the Trashmagician hissed. She shouted at the open kitchen window. “Nec!”

The Necromancer came in with another bag full of ripped-apart cat. She held it up and shook it. “This has gotta stop. Who even does this kind of thing anymore?”

The Trashmagician jabbed her index finger repeatedly at the computer screen. The Necromancer hiked up an eyebrow and leaned in to take a peep.

“What?” she asked.

“Guy who’s been all over the blogs,” the Trashmagician said. “He checked in at the Chinese place down the street. And look at that username.”

The Necromancer’s eyes went wide. She made a small wheezing sound and dropped the bag full of cat chunks.

“Shit!” the Necromancer shrieked. She ran out into the hallway. “I’m going to go put boards on the doors!”

“He’s a stuff-toucher,” the Trashmagician wailed. She followed the Necromancer into the hall. “He’s going to touch our stuff!”

“That’s where the dead animals are coming from! Has he liked any of the restaurant selfies?”

The Trashmagician sprinted back into the kitchen and scrolled on her laptop a little. “Yeah. Ohhh, so gross. So gross.”

“Vic sleeps in the living room! It’s got sheers!”

“Why would you put him in the living room! Monster’s probably been creeping on him while he changes!”

“Because the monster should be in the Pacific Northwest!”

They heard a flush and Vic stepped out of the powder room. He looked more perturbed than usual.

“Guys…?” he said slowly.

The Necromancer stared at him helplessly. The Trashmagician licked her lips.

“Uh,” the Trashmagician said. “So you always knew Walton was a useless tit, right?”

* * *

 

Vic took it real bad. The Necromancer had a quiet word with the neighbor and they dragged him into the neighbor’s basement via a tunnel the neighbor didn’t know was there. The Necromancer whistled the entire way.

“Frankenstein, huh?” the neighbor asked Vic, pouring him a glass of absinthe. Vic moaned from his spot on the neighbor’s living room floor. “Nice name. I think I’ve heard it somewhere before but I couldn’t be sure.”

Vic took the absinthe and tried to roll himself into a blanket burrito.

“He’ll be like that for a while,” the Necromancer said. “He’s fragile.”

“No kidding. I guess I’ll vacuum around him.”

“Can’t suggest it. The loud noise bothers him.”

The neighbor blinked at the Necromancer. “Do you intentionally raise up the most pathetic people you can, or…?”

“It’s a humanitarian effort,” the Necromancer protested. “Look how sad he is! Just keep him from sticking anything in an electrical outlet for a few days, please? We’ll come back for him when we’ve got a coalition together.”

“Yeah, sure. Morning and evening walks okay?”

“I know you’re kidding – ”

“I’m really not.”

“ – but please don’t put him near windows and stuff.”

“Fine. Fine. Do you know what happened to my weed whacker, by the way? I lent it to your buddy, gosh, seven months ago?”

The Necromancer gave the neighbor a radiant smile. “I’ll find out.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

 

With Vic safely installed, they set up the living room for a stakeout, turned off the front porch light, and waited.

Around 3 a.m., they heard a soft rustling outside. The Trashmagician paused mid-army crawl and looked over to the streetside living room window. The Necromancer was sitting under the window with a bottle of wine and the remote control for the porch light. The Trashmagician slithered the rest of the way over.

They sat very still. Outside, something scuffled and scrambled at the porch, busily moving in the darkness. The Trashmagician felt the coolness of the Necromancer’s hand before it touched her arm. She found the hand with one of her one and tapped twice. They rose as silently as they could and peered through the sheer curtains.

The Necromancer hit the button on the remote and the front of the house flooded with light. They heard the startled grunt, and later they would notice the disemboweled cat hanging by its neck from the porch light – but at the moment, their attention was consumed by the massive shape of a fatless, foul-skinned ogre staggering away from their house.

The Trashmagician shoved the curtains aside and threw open the window. “Hey buddy!”

The creature paused in the act of loping down the street. There was a tense pause, and then a baffled, “What?”

“Gotta let it go, man,” the Necromancer said. “It’s been two hundred years! Live in the now!”

“No!” the monster snapped. “Never! I will have my vengeance.”

“Yeah, okay, except he’s been dead for literally centuries,” the Trashmagician said. “How is that not flippin’ vengeance?”

“As long as he draws breath, Frankenstein must suffer!”

“So if he doesn’t draw breath, he’s good?”

“You know what I mean! Frankenstein is an abomination. He must pay for his transgressions!”

“You’re upcharging him, you douchebag! You gotta drop it. Think of your own mental state, man, this isn’t healthy. There are probably support groups and shit, nowadays. Persecuting some college dropout kid unto death, twice, for doing some ill-conceived science doesn’t lead to anything productive and we all know it.”

“I don’t care!”

“You’ve had all this time to hang out and, I dunno, play Atari games and shit, and you still want to axe Vic?”

“I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask to be made like this!”

“Welcome to the friggin’ jungle, dude!” the Trashmagician shouted. “Nobody likes it, but you’re the only one who goes around killing innocent people and, uh, cats. There are plastic surgeons, if you’re that all-fired about your body. Or go learn a language or something. Improve yourself. You could be Mr. Universe if you weren’t so busy being a wang.”

“No! He must suffer!”

“What the hell do you call starving and freezing to death in the fucking Arctic?”

“He can never suffer as much as I have suffered, but he will be punished!”

“Man, forget you!” the Necromancer shouted. “Get out of here before I get the Neighborhood Watch on your ass.”

The monster shook a fist. Across the street, dogs began to bark and an upstairs light clicked on. The monster turned tail and ran down the street.

The porch light clicked off.

“S’bullshit,” the Trashmagician grumbled.

* * *

 

“An RPG?” Sam asked. “I got a copy of D&D third edition at home but I figured you for someone who’d have a collection.”

“Ew, no. The other kind.”

“What, like, Final Fantasy?”

“Nah. A rocket-propelled grenade. At first I thought maybe a MANPADS would do it, but that seems like overkill.”

“Oh. You wanna tell me why?”

“Monster hunt,” the Trashmagician replied.

“Okay,” Sam said slowly. “Well. Who’s mob contacts do you want to use?”

The Trashmagician wrinkled her nose. “Das racist. Just because I’m Italian–”

“Mine, then. What kind of monster?”

“Big mean eight-foot-tall serial-murdering intractable motherfucker.”

Sam squinted a little. “What’s he done?”

“You mean besides intractably serially murder?”

“There’s more?”

“Not really. But you gotta admit that’s a biggie.”

Sam shrugged. “All right. Whatever. An RPG?”

“Yeah. An RPG. Can you help me out?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sam said. He drank in silence for a moment. The Trashmagician wiped the counter.

Sam cleared his throat. “Seriously. What’s up with that?”

“Gotta kill a monster, Sam. He’s Instagram-stalking Vic.”

“Nooo.”

“Look at my face, Sam,” the Trashmagician said. “This is serious. It’s Vic. He’s hassling Vic. He’s been leaving dead and mutilated stuff on our doorstep. Last night he hanged a dead cat from our porch light.”

“Gross, but – “

“SAM,” the Trashmagician said. “The first time, Vic got himself all messed up because he wouldn’t tell anybody anything about this gigantic jerk that was killing everybody he knew! But now we know, and we gotta do something, and to do something I’m gonna need an RPG. You gonna come through or what?”

Sam shrugged. “Fine. Fine. But only for Vic.”

* * *

 

“An RPG?”

“You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked me that today,” the Trashmagician said. The Necromancer was sitting on the back porch. “As my fathers before me, I make bold to say: what’s it to ya?”

“One of the boys in black came to see me. Your favorite. The one with the ponytail.”

“Oh. Dag.” The Trashmagician sat down. “Why? What do they want? Does this have to do with the planet Venus?”

“They may or may not want us to quit it,” the Necromancer said. “They told me that vagrancy laws are tightening up and forcing homeless people to move around more and that anything we think we see lurking around out house in the dead of night that could possibly be confused for a monster is definitely just a vagrant.”

“When’d you tell him to cut the shit?”

“I never stopped telling him to cut the shit. He mentioned that anyone seeking to attack a vagrant with an RPG should be advised that they do it at the risk of legal repercussions.”

“Oh, whatever.”

“And he really wanted to see my paperwork on Vic. How do you feel about adopting him?”

“Don’t wanna.”

The Necromancer coughed into her fist. “Right. Right. We’ll get that sorted out.”

The Trashmagician let it slide. “What’s with the paperwork?”

“Population stuff. There’s a cap on how many people I can raise in a decade for the purposes of social integration. If I bust my cap it’s considered reverse poaching.”

“Really. It’s a misdemeanor?”

“I know, right? But you’ve gotta import, usually, so there’s a lot of tariff and ecology stuff mixed in. They want to keep an eye on that.”

The Trashmagician mulled that over for a second. Did that mean that what the guys did to dead people was considered animal cruelty? Maybe she should call the ASPCA. “Your tax dollars at work.”

The Necromancer scoffed. “Hell, I’ll adopt Vic. Claim him as a dependent. I could use the tax break.”

“He lives in your house. He eats your food.” The Trashmagician sat back a little. “But yeah. An RPG. What’d Hutch say about the house?”

“He didn’t say, because I didn’t ask. The less he knows, the better. He’ll want to come along and you know the boys are a packaged set. We’d have to wait for Joe to pick his wary way over every root and gulch.”

“When’s he getting that knee replaced?”

“We both ended up being free on Thursday. Probably in the morning.”

“Nice. Sam thinks I can have the thing early next week.”

“Sooner the better. Don’t want to impose on the neighbor, or let the monster get wise.”

“Yeah,” the Trashmagician said. They looked out on the backyard for a while.

“Where do you think he’s getting all the cats, anyway?” the Necromancer mused.

* * *

 

Hutch had bought himself a really nice little farmhouse up the coast a little, almost midway to Myrtle Beach. The property was near enough to a river that Hutch wouldn’t be hurting for escape routes and far enough away from the shore to be tucked into the trees and allow for a respectable basement.

A man needed a catacomb. That was always the problem with apartment life, the Necromancer had always felt.

The house itself was nice, too. Gas range. Couldn’t beat it.

“Not bad,” the Trashmagician said, looking around with her hands on her hips.

“Yeah. He did all right. We’re working on the decor. You’re invited to the after-party for the housewarming. Y’all too, boys,” the Necromancer said, glancing over her shoulder.

Sam was standing by the side of the Trashmagician’s truck and sharing a cigarette with Vic. Sam was sanguine. Vic didn’t look well. He’d been pretty good about staying out of the neighbor’s way, but living with the thought that the monster was still at large in the world sent his emotional state careening through fits of antipathy and despair and numbness and something that couldn’t quite be described as anything but “crazy motherfuckerism.” Twice they’d had to stop him from escaping the neighbor’s house, strapped to the gills with weapons and climbing gear.

“Great,” Sam and Vic said in unison.

“You don’t think it’s easier to lure him into the house?” the Trashmagician said, turning around to peer at it.

“Oh, probably. Do you want to try it? I was thinking we set up a bonfire and a camp tent and KAPOW, but if you’ve got your heart set…”

“All I’m saying is I’d check the house, if I were a monster.”

The Necromancer looked back at the place. “Nah. Nah. Too much rubble. Too much potential for survival. It’s best if we see him totally buttered across the landscape.”

“That’s fair,” the Trashmagician said. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

They went out on the dunes and pitched two tents. They sent Vic to stand at the side of the shore where they couldn’t see his anxious face and took some pictures that could, once topped with a dogpile of filters, be considered contemplative. The Necromancer posted them and patiently refreshed the app, waiting for likes.

They stayed near the tents for the afternoon and built a fire as the sun sank beneath the river. They drank cold beer and flicked cigarette butts into the fire. Vic said almost nothing, peeling one bottle of beer after another, leaving little damp scraps of paper in the sand. The Trashmagician picked them up and tossed them in to burn.

Around nine o’clock they broke up the fire. They went into their tents, extinguished their lights, and waited five minutes.

Then they snuck out the backs.

They stayed low to the ground, sliding like snakes across the earth. Sam and the Trashmagician bracketed the Necromancer and Vic, keeping an eye on them and an eye on the horizon. It was slow going to get back up to the grass bank of the farm, but they kept up a careful trip across the fields to slide under the pickup truck. The Trashmagician hauled out the RPG and moved on.

The three of them waited beneath the truck, shoving earplugs into their ears. The Necromancer reached out in the dark and held Vic’s hand, intertwining their fingers. He dug his fingertips in between her phalanges and she rubbed her thumb against his.

It only took about an hour for them to see some results. It was dark, but not too dark to see the huge form paddling assiduously across the river.

Vic was breathing too hard. The Necromancer caught the faint wet shine of Sam’s eyes across the underbelly of the truck and gave him a look. He shrugged.

The stand-up paddleboard ground up onto the shore of the river and the impossibly tall figure stepped onto the sand. Further to the north, the tall grass just concealed the Trashmagician. The figure on the beach approached the tents.

Beside the Necromancer, Vic swallowed.

The Trashmagician rolled herself slowly up from the grass and shouldered the RPG. There was a moment of steady movement – another footstep from the monster – a deep-breathed moment of aim – a giant hand seizing the tent canvas, ripping it up, and waving like a banner – and then she fired.

The first impression was of the piercing line of smoke, and then the bright brilliance of detonation. The first sound was a dense kaboom, and then the air reasserted itself with a vast wub that went straight to the bone. Smoke billowed up into the sky. Their ears were ringing a little.

Vic let out a whine.

“I think she might’ve missed a spot,” Sam shouted.

They pulled out the plugs and dug themselves out from under the truck. Once on his feet, Vic tried to bolt down to the beach. The Necromancer tackled him to the ground, approximating a little Greco-Roman horseplay to keep him on his belly as the beach fumed.

“Let’s give it a minute, huh, sweetheart?” the Necromancer grunted. Vic thrashed and scratched on the ground. “I really don’t want to bring you up if you die from smoke inhalation.”

“He might get away!”

Sam squinted at Vic and the Necromancer a little. “You did tell him what a grenade was, right?”

The Trashmagician had started out sprinting toward them but she finished by dragging the RPG behind her, moving at a trudge and panting.

“I dunno,” she gulped. “You think it was enough? I mean, I only fired a fucking anti-tank weapon system at him. You think it was too subtle?”

Sam sniffed.

Vic played dead under the Necromancer for a moment or two, then rolled his whole body and bucked her off. She fell sideways with an irate squeal and Vic legged it for the beach. The Trashmagician dropped the RPG and took off after him, Sam in pursuit.

The Necromancer picked herself up and pulled off her heels, setting them primly by the side of the gun and dusting off her clothes. She followed at a sedate pace.

The smoke was dissipating in the river breeze and Vic was hedging and darting around, kicking through the scorch mark. It didn’t take long to spot what he was seeing – monster goo was smeared all across the sand, chunks of bone and blasted meat steaming here and there around the blast site. Vic bent down, scuttling around and picking up the bits of the monster with his hands.

“It’s dead,” he mumbled. “It’s dead. It’s dead. It’s dead.”

“It’s all right if you want to eat some,” the Necromancer said. The Trashmagician gave her a look. “It might be therapeutic.”

“No!” Vic cried. He squeezed one of the bits of monster in his hand, letting it squish around his tearing fingers. “It killed my – it ruined – I’m – it – !”

Vic ripped the little chunk of monster into pieces, befouling his hands and breathing in more smoke than he should. He seized another bit and rubbed it between his hands, as if he needed to feel it on his skin. They all watched him for a while, before Sam coughed.

“So,” Sam said. “Maybe let him have a minute?”

“No way,” the Trashmagician said. “We gotta watch him. He’s hysterical. He might try and shove it all into an alembic and we’ll be back at square one.”

“Just make him a s’more. He’ll be okay.”

The Necromancer walked over to the fire and stoked the cooling ashes.

“When you finish, sweetheart, just come on back,” she called to Vic. She popped some kindling into the pit and began to stir it around. “We’ll be right over here.”

Vic screamed a little at the cold heavens. The scream took on the pitch of a laugh. Sam and the Trashmagician looked at him for a second, before carefully coming over to sit by the fire.

“I think he’ll be fine,” Sam drawled.

Vic did come back, but not until he’d rolled around in the goo and the scorch marks. He ate six s’mores in rapid succession and fell asleep still befouled from head to foot, smiling like an angel.

The Necromancer sent Hutch a Snapchat of it. He had to admit that that was pretty metal.


	12. Mandraked Over the Coals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Mandrakes

“Have you been mucking about in the garden?” yelled the Trashmagician through the cellar door.

“No,” replied the Necromancer. “Can this wait? This is a bad time.”

She picked up the arm lying outside her carefully-chalked nodes and hurled it toward the pile of grey, ashy dust in the center of the floor. There was a blinding blue flash and the arm was reduced to a smaller heap of the same dusty substance.

“Solvet in favilla, jackass,” muttered the Necromancer, and reached for the dust buster.

There was a thud on the old wooden door. “Can I come in?”

“Some part of ‘this is a bad time’ isn’t convincing, is it?” the Necromancer howled over the roar of the vacuum. The door had already creaked open, letting in a piercing shaft of noon sunlight.

The Trashmagician scraped garden mud off her shoes on the doorjamb and descended. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Better do, if you’re bothering me,” said the Necromancer as she switched off the dust buster and detached the salts jar. “What’s happening?”

The Trashmagician fished a stack of old seed packets out of her pocket and held one out for the Necromancer’s inspection.

The Necromancer peered through her glasses. “Ginseng?”

“Yeah.” The Trashmagician ran a hand through her hair.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, it’s sprouted, and it’s not ginseng. It’s mandrake.”

The Necromancer let her hands fall to her sides. “Great. Lovely. Ear-destroying deathscreams, right?”

“So they say.”

The Necromancer started to pace the cellar, scuffing up the chalked nodes with the pointy toes of her polished black boots. “So. Why don’t we just leave them till winter? The cold will take care of them, right?”

“I dunno, man. They’re hardy to zone 6 in the US. And anyway, we can’t afford to wait that long.”

“What? Why?”

The Trashmagician sighed. “The goddamn chipmunks are digging up all the bulbs, and when the run out of bulbs and go for the mandrakes they’re likely to take out the entire block.”

“So we kill the chipmunks.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried? I think they’ve lived close to magic long enough that they’ve developed higher intellect. Or at least high enough intellect not to eat poisoned hazelnuts. Probably smart enough to sing, at least.”

“Great.” The Necromancer slumped into a heavy Renaissance chair. “So in addition to the screaming death plants, we also have to worry about a bunch of legally-safe knock-offs of significant hyper-intelligent members of order rodentia.”

“One problem at a time.” The Trashmagician opened the bar fridge and pulled out two beers. She chucked one at the Necromancer before throwing herself into the swivel chair pulled up to the computer table.

“Well, what’s the plan?” The Necromancer held the cold beer to her temple and chilled her sour expression.

The Trashmagician began spinning in the desk chair like an especially lazy fakir. “Do you have any ideas? I don’t.”

“How sure are we that these mandrakes are the screaming kind? Plenty of them don’t scream. We know that from facts.”

“Cf. the chipmunks, dude. If chipmunks can go all magical in our garden, mandrakes don’t stand a chance. Maybe they’ll be even worse, if runoff from whatever eldritch nonsense you get up to down here goes and bleeds out into the water table.”

“Fine. Then I guess step one should be evacuating the neighborhood so no one gets The Shriek. A couple of blocks of plasticine and a tangle of wires should do it. We could just report a suspicious package. Hell, we may not even need a package at all.”

“Meh.” The Trashmagician squinched up her face. “Suspicious packages are beneath us. We’re more creative than that. The solution lacks vision and scope.”

“Hey, zoom in. Ear-shattering deathscreams, remember, happening sooner rather than later. I’m not reanimating an entire neighborhood again. Why don’t we just refer this to the CDC or something?”

“Mandrakes aren’t a disease.”

“Not so far as you know. Uh, maybe the EPA? Fish and Game?”

“You know it’d have to be MIBs.”

“I don’t want the MIBs,” the Necromancer protested. “I know you’ve got your favorite but to me they’re just little boys giving people scornful looks and calling them ‘ma’am’ in no uncertain way. As soon as they know we’ve got garden pests, we’ll have them down on us like a vulgar euphemism for oral sex.”

The Trashmagician halted her spin with a foot. “Who do you think you’re preaching to, dude? We can’t bring _anybody_ in, is what I mean. We’re in containment mode.”

“Well, great.”

“Listen, there is no clock on the government’s business. Do you want to be out of the house basically indefinitely while the ‘containment situation’ or whatever they call it plays out? No. We might never get the house back.”

The Necromancer looked pale. “But the house is where we keep all the stuff.”

“Exactly. We fix this ourselves or not at all.”

* * *

All day the dining room in the DMZ had been slowly filling up with books new and old. The Trashmagician was installed behind a wall of tomes and old lab notebooks with a pot of double-strength Arabic coffee. The Necromancer was dug in at the other end of the table, clutching a full mug of espresso with a silly straw stuck in it and peering a pile of scientific papers on the physical effects of certain frequencies and volumes. It was getting on for dark.

“The thing I can’t figure out,” said the Necromancer, “is whether the plants are supposed to scream only if uprooted alive. Like can we hit the bed with some kind of herbicide?”

“I’ll che—wait a second.” The Trashmagician let the eighteenth century magical herbal hit the table with a thud. “I think we’re being had.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If the scream kills everyone that hears it, how do we know it happens?”

The Necromancer leaned back in her chair. “Maybe deaf people just watched everyone around them drop dead when one of the little bastards was uprooted. Although I suppose there’s the question of how they would know there had been a sound at all.”

“You’re assuming there is a sound,” insisted the Trashmagician. “Why would we assume that? There’s no more myth more bullshit than the one that tries to stop you from looking into stuff for your own good. Someone is attempting to pull a fast one. Probably to protect their stock.”

The Necromancer shrugged. “Theoretically speaking any kind of even semi-magical herb should get you buttered if you try know how to use it. I suppose that would make them a hot ticket. Controlled substances and that. Cartels on the border having shootouts over caches of Tijuana snowflake. Or snow drake, I guess.”

“I think you usually use them in poisons,” the Trashmagician mused. “Nightshades and stuff. Emetics. Or you poop yourself to death. So. Yeah. I guess you could make at least a pretty serious cocktail out of it.”

“So here we have deaf people faithfully recording incidents that have killed their villages,” the Necromancer said, holding up one hand. She held up the other, “And here we have the probability of witches trying to lie to us.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Fine. It’s still a gamble, I mean to say. I believe in the civic-mindedness and respect for history on the part of deaf people more than I believe in the business savvy of witches.”

“I concede the point but the thing is that we can’t really know.”

The Necromancer leaned back and balanced her chair on two legs. “How magical are these things, anyway? Like, naturally.”

“Couldn’t say. They don’t have all that many uses, really. You use them as poppets, but not necessarily any more effectively than any other kind of poppet. Definitely less than a well-aimed voodoo doll. They’re narcotics. Poisons. John Donne might assign you to go dig one up. They’re man-dragons.”

“Like horseradishes.”

“Yeah. They’re fertility things, I guess because tubers kind of look like weird junk. Some people anoint the roots, which, y’know. Witch shit, witches not being great for knowing things in the general way. And, uh…” The Trashmagician rustled around in the papers and flipped a book open, tapping the page. “From the Greek: ‘bad for cows.’”

“What?”

“Mal d’agoras. So I guess bad for crowds, too. Causes partisanship, maybe?”

The Necromancer squinted.

“Assuming these plants are actually magical,” she said bullishly, “how would you say that manifests? Are they imbued with intelligence? Are they as smart as magic chipmunks, for instance?”

“I dunno. I’ve never met a mandrake. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I’d met a mandrake.”

“Let’s take witches out of this entirely, shall we, on the grounds that anyone who anoints a mandrake root clearly isn’t getting The Shriek and therefore probably isn’t actually magical and unlikely to be a knower of things. If mandrakes exposed to magical environmental pollution are themselves magical in some respect, I’d just like to point out that the belief in the myth of the scream serves to benefit the mandrakes themselves most.” The Necromancer slurped on the silly straw. “Witches would get their stuff stolen. Mandrakes would get killed. Order of magnitude, that.”

“I suppose I wouldn’t want to be uprooted either, it’s true,” the Trashmagician allowed. “But we do only ever hear about this from humans, unless mandrakes are able to write books.”

“We don’t know they don’t. In print, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

“I always thought there was something suspicious about Titus Flavius Josephus. Too much ‘us’ in that name. Trying to be a man of the people.”

“And all this time he was really a wrinkly old root. I suppose that’s too much Italian sunshine for you.”

“Bit of a Quisling in his way, or at least willing to sell his people down the river. Told people how to uproot ‘em. Mandrake’ll make you barf up a demon, according to him.”

“If only we’d had it some months ago. Two birds, hmm?”

“Obviously we run into trouble when we try to explain how he ever held a pen,” the Trashmagician admitted. “So there’s a hole in that story. All things being equal it’s probably humans making shit up. Or deaf people reporting faithfully the total destruction of their villages, as aforesaid.”

“How would the scream even work?” the Necromancer asked. “I mean, do you have to hear it, in sensual terms? Or does the vibration of the eardrum somehow damage the brain?”

“Difference between a heart attack and frightened to death?”

“Uh, yeah. Something like that.”

“I dunno but there’s a doctoral dissertation in this.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

The Trashmagician poured herself another cup of coffee. “You’re gonna go out of earshot and I’m gonna have to pull one up. It’s the only way to know for sure. If they do scream you should be able to reanimate everyone before anyone notices. They only scream once, right when they’re just pulled up, so either way we’ll know for sure.”

“And if they’re just your ordinary sub-verbal mandrake roots, then… well, I guess the EPA would have to give us a pass.”

“Yeah. Win-win.”

The windows were open. As they abandoned the books to go meet Vic down at the pho place, the Necromancer was pretty sure she heard leaves rustling. It might’ve just been the wind.

* * *

In the morning, the Trashmagician got on her mucky clothes and went out into the garden. Armed with a spade, she stood on the edge of the mandrake plot and fiddled with her walkie-talkie.

“Breaker breaker, this is Levitater, anybody out there?”

The walkie talkie crackled and the Necromancer’s voice came in. “Breaker ‘Tater, this is Neckbone. In position ordering you a chai latte.”

“And stay out. Where’s Vic, anyway?”

“Asked him to go do a grocery run. He’ll be there all day. We might have to go get him later, actually.”

“Sick. The poor kid.”

“It’s for his own good.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m… hoo. I’m gonna dig one up.”

“Copy that.”

“Turning off the walkie talkie. Start your timer—if I’m not back on the CB in 120 seconds, assume I’m dead.”

“Copy that, ‘Tater, over and out.”

The Trashmagician turned off the walkie talkie and took a deep breath. She got down in a squat and wrapped a gloved hand around the stems of a plant. She gave a light tug and the thing gave instantly. She slowly lifted it up into the air.

Under the caked-on dirt, the mandrake was white and sickly-looking. In its shriveled face two beady little black eyes blinked and squinted, and its tiny little toothless mouth yawned and closed a few times. It wriggled its roots in the air, disoriented by the blinding sunshine and thinness of the medium. It locked eyes with the Trashmagician and opened its mouth. A proportionally huge breath inflated its little body.

She didn’t think about what happened next. It just happened.

The Trashmagician squinted her eyes shut, held the mandrake up close, and let out a piercing shriek, right in its face. It didn’t last long, unversed as she was in screaming in the presence of magical things, but plenty long to get her point across. When she opened her eyes again, the mandrake was making a pained face and covering its earless head with its roots.

“Je _sus_ CHRIST!” the mandrake squalled. It had a high, reedy little voice, slightly hoarse. “What was that about?”

“Ha!” the Trashmagician said, blood running fast. “See how you like being screamed to death!”

“I think I’m deaf!”

“Good! Come on, you little turd blossom, hit me with your best shot! Come on!”

The mandrake opened and closed its mouth, looking conflicted. At last it cringed and squeezed its eyes closed. “Whaddayou want?”

“What, you can’t scream?”

“Of course we can scream! We’ve got to defend ourselves somehow!”

“So scream at me! C’mon, little man! Scream me dead!”

The mandrake wriggled uncomfortably. “No! Leave me alone! You’re not nice!”

The Trashmagician glared and sat back on her butt. She cupped a hand under the mandrake’s body and took its weight off its stems. “All right then. You can’t scream. So why does everyone say you can?”

“We can! I’m just choosing not to, okay?” The mandrake looked shifty.

“Don’t tell me this is pecking order stuff.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous!”

So, it was pecking order stuff. The Trashmagician grinned. “Sure. Okay. All right. So. If I scream every time, I could uproot you little blisters and put you all in a wheelbarrow and burn you to a crisp, couldn’t I?”

“I mean—”

“You’d just have to sit there and wriggle. Roast up a whole bunch of little tuber boys and eat you like French fries,” she went on, sadistically tickling the little thing’s belly. It writhed.

“Yeah, if you wanna poop yourself to death!” the mandrake squawked.

“I still feel like you’d be getting the worse end of that.”

“It’s not much revenge, but it’s better than most!”

“Fair point, mate.” She tossed the mandrake into the air and caught it again. “Maybe I’ll just sell you to witches instead.”

“You can’t! You wouldn’t!”

The Trashmagician looked the mandrake in its strange little face. It looked miserable. Some obscure vestigial gardener’s protective instinct pinged in her hypothalamus and she arched an eyebrow. No one deserved to be sold to witches.

“Yeah?” she said. “Then you’d better make it worth my while. I’m the alpha mandrake, you dig? There’s a new sheriff in town. And if you don’t want to end up under a bride’s pillow, you’ll play by my rules, capiche?”

She and the mandrake—far less sullen now that the ringing in its little non-existent ears was abating—were hammering out some broad policy changes when the Trashmagician heard the pitter patter of little high-heeled feet coming around the side of the house. More than 120 seconds had elapsed.

The mandrake looked over at the side yard, an ugly triumphant look coming onto its little face. It started to inhale.

The Trashmagician wrapped a hand around the mandrake’s head and squeezed her eyes shut. She clenched her teeth, trying to focus. Something tart and plasmic collected on her tongue and she felt the top and back of her head opening up like an unclenching fist.

She didn’t really have much of a plan; it was just that, well, the Necromancer didn’t scare easily. There was only one way she was going to be able to make this work.

It had to be big. It had to be beloved.

This was definitely going to hurt her more than it’d hurt the Necromancer.

The Necromancer came around the side of the house. At the same moment, an exquisite inlaid cabinet teleported into a wobbly spot some eight feet above the back patio. Glorious designs of gold and lapis lazuli gleamed in the morning sunshine for a moment before gravity exerted its familiar pressure and brought the beautiful thing down on the bricks with a horrific crack. The sides fell off. The legs broke. Brutalized, the design work shined.

The Necromancer dropped the coffee cups she’d been holding: the mocha began vomiting its contents onto her shoe. The Trashmagician stared at her, feeling blood trickling down from her nose and over her upper lip.

The Necromancer made a little wheeze of an inhale and then let out a shriek of rage so ferocious and unearthly she might’ve been confused for a fox, except that it went on, and on, and on. She came storming over, screaming like a banshee, blood vessels in her eyes bursting, and the Trashmagician shoved the mandrake into her face. She kept it there to take the brunt of the Necromancer’s scream and tried to dodge the scratching fingers that reached for her own nose.

When the scream finally cracked and became a whimper, the Trashmagician sprang up and howled in the Necromancer’s face, unintentionally spraying nose-blood at her. Then, still struggling away from the Necromancer’s claws, she screamed in the mandrake’s face. There! Dominance established.

She tossed the little blighter into a flowerpot and reached for the Necromancer’s wrists.

“Nec! Nec!” the Trashmagician cried, leaning out of the way to avoid getting headbutted by a wheezing Maenad. There was something about the relative silence that was way more disquieting than the shriek had been.

The Necromancer let out a mewling noise of blind hatred.

Excuses and explanations piled up faster than the Trashmagician could deliver them. The cabinet’s fate had not left her unmoved and she spoke in a panicked patter. “I’ll put it back! It was an accident! It’s for the greater good! I’ll fix it! It had to be done! I saved your life! You had to scream! You’re the beta mandrake!”

“It should have been me!” the Necromancer gasped. “It should have been me! It should have been YOU!”

When the Trashmagician finally judged the Necromancer competent to stand under her own power, she stood still and mutely absorbed the blows of beringed, grieving fists as the Necromancer pummeled her chest to relieve her devastation. Even a calm and steady explanation of the situation was not enough to completely quell the froth of fury, and there was a distinct iciness with which the Necromancer met her new vassal when the Trashmagician retrieved him from the flowerpot. The Trashmagician somehow suspected that the Necromancer held the mandrake faintly responsible for this.

After they made their agreement with the mandrake perfectly clear and the Necromancer had vindictively dumped the remnants of the chai into a pot of hydrangeas, the Trashmagician gave herself an eye-bleed teleporting the cabinet fragments back where they belonged. Upon agreeing that the last thing they needed was Yog in the closet, the Trashmagician retreated to the attic to let the Necromancer have a seethe while she nursed a migraine and hunted around for the right repair spell.

Even after the Trashmagician managed to zing the cabinet back together without accidentally attaching any tentacles or sentience (at least as far as they could tell), the Necromancer was sour for about a day. But she thawed considerably when the mandrakes gave the household the handsome gift of a writhing garbage bag on the back porch. The rodent problem in the backyard had almost totally vanished.

The Trashmagician didn’t find out what precisely had happened to the chipmunks until a few months later, when she recognized some familiar patterns on the fur stole hanging from the front door coat peg.

* * *

The Trashmagician bolted awake at 3 a.m. The garden was shrieking.

When she made it down to the back porch, the scream had abated but the noise of restless vegetation rolled on. The Necromancer, clothed in a floor-length dressing gown, stood smoking a cigarette and leaning on the rail post. She gave the Trashmagician an up-and-down look, as if old school shirts and boxer shorts were eccentric things to sleep in.

Vic was sitting on the porch in a plaid bathrobe. His bed head looked like it had been designed by Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

“Hi,” he said quietly.

“Evenin’,” the Trashmagician replied.

Out in the yard, a man in a black turtleneck and ski mask was being flung hither and yon like a dinghy on storm-tossed seas. The garden lurched and rolled, leaves roiling and unseen rooty arms pushing away under the topsoil.

“I told you, you can’t kill!” the Trashmagician shouted. The garden paused in the motion of heaving the intruder up on a three-foot swell.

One of the mandrakes popped out of the ground and came trotting over to the porch. It had a little tinfoil star pasted on its chest.

“Manny, what gives?” the Trashmagician demanded.

“He’s okay, cap!” said the mandrake. “He fainted when we started doing the wave.”

“You get a pulse?” the Necromancer asked, blowing out a plume of smoke.

“Yes, commander. Sacred honor he’s alive. Just unconscious.”

“Hmmm,” the Trashmagician said. “Fine. As you were. But don’t make him seasick or you’re going to have to clean it up.”

“Aye aye!”

The mandrake toddled back to the garden. He hopped back into his spot and the mandrakes washed the would-be burglar across the lawn a few more times before giving one big push up towards the back fence and tossed the man over out into the street.

The yard settled back down in a luxurious stretching motion. The crickets were too rattled to chirp. The Necromancer stood in mute contemplation of the night. Vic sniffed.

The Trashmagician took a deep, satisfied breath. “ADT can suck it.”


End file.
